Can't Stay Down (a Documentary)
by HelloHai
Summary: Tim has a thrilling time after a tonsillectomy. Nat Geo Wild ensues.
1. Doomsday

**So, apparently getting your tonsils out isn't as common as I imagined. But getting odd popsicles and stuffed dinosaurs are maybe a universal thing if you _did_ have your tonsils out.**

 **So, uh, enjoy.**

* * *

"It's like you want to kill me," Tim snaps, voice high and painful in his throat. "Oh, dear god - You do want to kill me."

"Tim," Bruce says as patiently as he can, which isn't very patiently at all and actually means he has ascended past the seventh level of Annoyed, "you're making a much bigger deal of this than need be."

Tim throws his hands in the air and paces about the cave. "Big deal? This is a _blasphemy._ I _trusted_ you." He counts off his fingers. "Let's see here...Jason's tried to kill me, the demon's -"

"Damian," Bruce interjects tiredly.

"-tried to kill me, Dick's inadvertently tried to kill me, Cassandra's scared my soul straight from my body, and now _you. You are trying to kill me._ In fact, the only person in this family who seems to care about my being alive is Alfred. Alfred wouldn't do this to me. Alfred is too good."

Bruce says something unintelligible and his eyes turn upwards. Tim thinks he hears, _this should be Dick's job._

"No way," Tim hisses, "there's just - Alfie wouldn't. There's no way he would do this to me."

"Don't shoot the messenger."

Tim's hands clap against his sides. "So that's it, then? The whole family is against me. The entire world is out to get me. I can't believe this. I just -"

"Tim, just accept it already."

"No."

"You're being dramatic."

"Rich, coming from you!"

Bruce lets out a sigh loud enough to be Exhibit A and lifts his reading glasses as he rubs his nose. He sits down heavily in his chair and swings its neighbor to Tim. "Sit."

"No."

"Tim."

"No. I'm not doing this. You can't do this without my consent. I _refuse_."

"Timothy Jackson," Bruce snaps, letting his hands drop to his lap as his face pulls into its usual scowl. " _Sit."_

Tim sits. Sometimes he hates how obedient he is, how little he can resist an order.

And he also hates it when Bruce uses his middle name. Parents use middle names to instill fear. The middle name is a _threat._

Tim crosses his arms and makes a point to look away.

"Fine," Bruce says. "You don't have to look at me. You just have to listen to me."

Bruce can make him sit.

Bruce can not make Tim listen.

So, sure - Batman had hammered the law of superiority into Tim during his time as Robin. But Tim is not only now his own man, but also experienced in tuning Bruce out whenever he pleases. Bruce liked to think he was 100% right. Tim knows the percentage is closer to 80%.

And right now - right at this moment - Bruce is in the latter 20%, the rare occasion where he is completely, utterly, and totally wrong.

Now if only Tim could prove it.

"This is the fourth time you've had strep this year."

"In case you are unaware," Tim mutters, unable to resist lifting his shirt to show Bruce the ugly scar running along his side, "I am without a _spleen."_

"I am aware."

"Then you are aware of what the spleen _does_ for the human body?"

" _Yes."_

Tim gets to his feet."Then we don't need this conversation."

He turns his back and starts speed walking for the steps. The farther from Bruce he got, the less power he held over him.

He hears Bruce call his name, focuses on the sound of his footsteps echoing throughout the cave.

He's going to make it. Hot damn he's going to make it. A few more steps, _and -_

"Oh, gosh diddly," Dick says, clamping a hand on Tim's head and spinning him back around. "Alfred told me you might need help, B, but honestly, I expected to be a bystander longer."

Tim tries ducking under his arm, but Dick instead drapes himself over Tim's shoulder with a hum.

He bites back a curse.

Dick has a habit about being in all the places Tim really, really, _really_ needs him not to be. And he has an even worse habit about being happy about it. It's like living with a golden retriever.

"Let go of me," Tim snaps, trying and failing again to twist out of the danger zone.

"Magic words?" Dick prompts.

" _Please."_

"No. Let's take a seat, Timmy - and, oh, what's this tab I have pulled up on my handy-dandy laptop? Let's sit down and look at it."

"In case you are -"

"In case you are unaware," Bruce finishes for him, lifting his head, "this is an intervention."

"In case you are unaware," Dick chimes, pulling Tim back down into the adjacent chair and spinning him around to face Bruce. He drops his laptop onto Tim's lap, and Tim scowls. "You, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, are about to learn all about the magical journey of a tonsillectomy."

Tim stares at the screen, and then cranes his head up at Dick. "Approximately how old do you think I am?"

"I spent a lot of time finding that article."

Tim shuts the laptop. Dick reaches over him and opens it. Tim shuts it again, and when Dick isn't fast enough in extracting his fingers, causes Dick to let out a yelp of protest.

"Tim, you're my reasonable one," Bruce tries. "Don't make me change that to Dick."

"Hell will freeze over," Dick adds happily, and then holds the top corners of his laptop open. "Read, Timmy."

"' _Have you ever had tonsilitis?'"_ Tim recites in the flattest, deadest voice he can muster, and then scans the rest of the paragraph from the article for _kids_ and pushes Dick's laptop onto the floor, where it lands with a small clatter. Dick lets out a hurt whine and a, "That wasn't very nice, Timmers, that's my third laptop this year", and Bruce lets out a single, weary, " _Tim."_

"I am not doing this," he announces, crossing his arms.

"Why not? Everybody gets their tonsils out."

"Bruce hasn't."

Bruce leans back a little in his chair. "Why do you kn-"

"And that's probably why Bruce sounds like a gorilla when he sleeps."

"I don't snore," Bruce protests.

"Argument noted and saved for another time - but look! I got my tonsils out when I was four."

"Four," Tim repeats sourly. "Not seventeen."

Dick's hand flutters above his head in a kind of wave. "Age doesn't matter. You don't need tonsils. They're gross, anyway."

"They're a part of the immune system. The throat's first defense."

Dick rubs Tim's shoulders and cooes. "So you did do some research!"

Bruce lets out a long-suffering sigh and retrieves Dick's laptop up from the floor. His nose scrunches for a moment - Tim normally would have made fun of the great _Batman, Gotham's resident stone-hearted vigilante,_ scrunching his nose, but he's currently too preoccupied with keeping what remains of his immune system as part of his immune system.

"' _Your tonsils are two lumps of tissue that work as germ fighters for your body. The trouble is that sometimes germs like to hang out there, where they cause infections. In other words, instead of fighting infections, the tonsils become infected.'_ In other words: your immune system is currently doing you more harm than good."

"Think of them as underperforming Wayne Enterprises employees," Dick suggests. "Fire them without mercy."

* * *

Which is why Tim finds himself the midnight before his doom internally screaming to 'Honor to Us All' whilst watching Mulan, the only Disney movie that Damian has deemed quasi-acceptable and not made remarks scathing enough to make even Dick moan.

They're sitting in the living room, Tim curled in an armchair. He eyes Dick's Baja Blast Mountain Dew on the coffee table with both contempt and jealousy.

He's particularly bitter about the popcorn Dick has made, popcorn Damian celebrates as "the best" and "especially masterful" and "absolutely the peak of Dick's culinary career".

Tim knows that Dick can barely make cereal without spilling a little of the milk, and even if this popcorn really _is_ his "best", that only means it's marginally less burnt and overly salted than usual. But that doesn't mean Tim doesn't want it.

It's a universal law: you want what you can't have.

And currently, Tim is barred from everything - even water. _Water!_ What the hell was water going to do?

What were _really_ the chances he'd suffocate on his own vomit during Doomsday?

And thinking about that is probably the reason Dick declared a Disney night. And also probably because Bruce doesn't trust Tim not to run.

It's not that he's scared or anything - he has enough run-ins with stitches and needles and syringes to be _scared -_ but not being afraid does not necessarily mean that he isn't...squeamish.

He _had_ done his research. Dick knew him well - and though he will never, ever, not-in-a-million years tell his brother so, it did help. Saying "you're getting your tonsils out" was more vague than everybody realized. Knowing what that meant meant more.

However, in the process of doing his research, he'd come across review upon review of pain and pain and more pain and Tim is no stranger to sore throats, but he kept reading about Tylenol and ibuprofen and painkillers and maybe doing his research hadn't actually been such a good idea.

"You good?"

He starts, shooting his legs out onto the floor before relaxing and looking up at Dick's stupid, smiling, sunny face. He must have moved from the couch without Tim noticing. Damian, still on the couch, stares daggers at them both. Tim hears the beginning of 'I'll Make a Man Out of You', and Damian's eyes slide back towards the screen.

"Just awaiting my demise," Tim mutters.

Dick ruffles his hair. Tim swats at his hands and smoothes it back down.

"The only thing I remember about getting my tonsils out was getting to eat lots of popsicles. I had ice cream for dinner - what could be better than that? And Alfred bought you the fancy low calorie stuff you like."

"Which I appreciate," Tim replies. "But I remind you that you can only remember popsicles because you were four. But I read up on tonsillectomies, and they sound worse the older the victim -"

"Patient," Dick stresses.

" _-_ is," Tim finishes. "So excuse me for being wary."

Dick lets out a quiet laugh. Damian's eyes leap from the screen back to them. They narrow at Dick's smile, and when he catches Tim glaring at him, he smiles an evil smile and draws a hand across his throat. Tim, five years older, five years more mature, and with two years of Damian Experience, promptly sticks his tongue out.

"Bruce wanted me to ask you," Dick continues, drawing Tim's attention away, "who you wanted to take you to Leslie's."

"Alfred's not driving?"

Dick smiles. "Of course he is."

Oh. He was asking who he wanted with him.

His cheeks flame. "It - it doesn't matter. Whatever's easiest for you. Whoever's free. You know." He shrugs, and this time goes out of his way to avoid Damian's eyes.

"Okay," Dick says, and runs his hand through Tim's hair one last time. "Whatever you say, Timmers."

* * *

He should have said that he wanted Dick.

He'd been woken at the unholy hour of four in the morning (yes, he was a Bat, but four in the morning was a hellish hour of maybe morning, maybe night) by none other than Bruce. Tim put on a hoodie over his t-shirt and made no move to take off his sweatpants. When he stumbled out to the car where Bruce waited, groggy and coffee-deprived, neither Bruce nor Alfred said anything.

He woke up a little when Bruce slid into the back with him. Bruce offered a small smile, and Tim wondered if he knew that it came out more of a grimace.

Dick, at least, would have broken the stony morning silence. Tim probably would have found it annoying, but a conversation - any conversation - was better than silence.

Because it's _Doomsday,_ for goodness' sakes. And maybe - just a _little maybe -_ his squeamishness has developed into a miniscule nugget of fear.

He was pretty sure Bruce's hand on his back was meant to be comforting as Alfred dropped them off at the clinic, but he felt more like Bruce was walking him off the plank.

They are in a room, now, just _waiting,_ Tim sitting on the bed and Bruce awkwardly standing against the wall. The silence is stifling. If there were any windows, Tim definitely would have considered making a run for it.

Bruce must see it on his face, because he forces another pained smile and says, like all the words are teeth being pulled from his mouth, "I'll be here the whole time."

Tim blinks at him and then hikes an eyebrow high on his forehead.

"Could you make this any less awkward?"

"Dick told me to say it," he admits sheepishly. "It...doesn't help?"

"No."

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Tim swings his feet over the floor and picks at the sheets.

"It's still weird," he finally says. He receives a smile that looked slightly less effortful for it.

"Sleep," Bruce suggests. "I don't know how long it will be, and I know you were up past the end of Dick's movie."

"Dick's a snitch," he mutters in response, but nevertheless still settles down on the foreign mattress. It's thin, and he can feel the springs. The pillow is flat and smells like sawdust.

He doesn't really feel like sleeping, especially when he feels so... _weird,_ but it isn't as if there's anything else to do (maybe if he falls asleep before Leslie comes, she won't put him under. He hates anesthesia. He's watched enough scifis to know that anesthesia is one of the first steps to a brainwashing. Not that he thinks Leslie would brainwash him. But if he is reciting his name, age, and current profession to himself, it's just to be _safe_ , a _precaution,_ in case something goes _wrong…)_

He doesn't know if he falls asleep or not. But the last thing he remembers is realizing that Bruce's fingers are carding through his hair.

* * *

He comes to slowly, and for the first few moments he's completely disoriented. Was he kidnapped? Was there an explosion? When did he pass out?

But then - _ow is an understatement -_ his throat hurts like a _bitch._

He rolls onto his side with a groan, and then regrets it because it made the pain his throat flare and his stomach flip.

Oh, yeah.

 _Bye-bye, tonsils._

"Welcome back," someone greets, and he pries one eye open to Dick's blinding smile before closing it again.

Dick snaps his fingers under his nose with a laugh. "Come on, Timmers. You can fall asleep at home."

Home? Home does sound nice. This mattress kind of sucks. And he wants to brush his teeth. His mouth is dry and sour, like it's been stuffed with cotton.

"Feel sick," he says, words barely a breath.

"I know, baby," Dick cooes, and Tim's lips twitch in the barest of smiles, because Dick rarely used endearments in place of nicknames. If it were anyone else, it would sound forced. But Dick has a funny way of making everything right.

"My throat hurts," he whispers, because he doesn't think Dick understands that his throat is burning.

"I know, baby, I know," Dick repeats. "Why don't we try sitting up?"

He props himself up and moans a little at the feel of Dick's hand against his cheek. Dick maybe laughs. Tim doesn't know why, since this is no laughing matter. His throat hurts - hadn't he said that already? It isn't in just the usual tight, swollen kind of way he can stand. It feels tight, swollen, and like maybe he's swallowed the embers of a fire.

Something hard and cold presses against his face. At first he thinks it's an ice pack, but when he opens his eyes it is a bubblegum pink Barbie popsicle.

"Want it?" Dick asks, and then lifts the box and shakes it. "Get this - Bruce bought them."

He takes the popsicle away from Tim's face and tears the top off with his teeth before setting it in Tim's hands. It takes Tim a minute to process this before he lifts it to his mouth and sucks with an immediate wince.

Dick winces, too. "Sorry, buddy."

It might be agonizing to swallow, but the popsicle does feel good against his throat.

"Where's Bruce?" he tries after a few minutes, voice hoarse and still barely audible. He doesn't want to try for any louder.

Dick takes his own popsicle from his mouth and jerks his head towards the door. "Talking with Leslie and waiting for Alfred. I just got here an hour ago. You're cute when you sleep, even if you drool a little."

Tim makes a face. "Don't drool."

Dick wipes a bit of dried evidence off his cheek with his thumb. "Sure you don't, Timmy."

The door opens softly, and Dick turns his smile up to Bruce. Bruce lets his lips twitch at the sight Tim and his outrageously pink popsicle. He takes a seat at the end of the bed, and the mattress creaks under his weight.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," Tim says back.

"Wasn't so bad, was it?"

Tim shakes his head, and then grimaces when it makes him dizzy. "No. Hurts very bad. Thanks for Barbie."

He waves the end of his popsicle. Bruce huffs in a way that could almost be considered a laugh.

"I just saw 'popsicles' on the box, so I'm glad," he says, and then averts his eyes and mumbles, "I got you something else, too."

He pulls something from the inside of his jacket and produces a stuffed stegosaurus. Tim would laugh if it didn't hurt, so he just grins wildly and takes it. It has a little stitched smile and his grin grows wider.

So, he's seventeen - no one is too old for stuffed dinosaurs. _No one._

"Are we all set?" Dick asks, finishing the last of his popsicle's syrup before taking Tim's wrapper, too.

"All set," Bruce affirms, and extends a hand to Tim. "Ready?"

Tim grabs his hand and lets him pull him off the bed. He slides off the mattress and staggers into Bruce's side, sighing against his chest. Bruce's hand massages the back of his neck.

"Okay?" he says, and Tim can feel the two syllables rumble through his chest against his forehead.

"I can carry him," Dick suggests.

"I think Tim is perfectly capable of walking to the car."

Tim nods in agreement, even though his knees feel like Jello and he really doesn't feel so much like walking as he does about sleeping. When he peers over at Dick, his brother has raised eyebrows and beckons him with both arms.

"No one ever wants me to carry them," Dick pouts. "How am I supposed to practice, in case I need to out in the field?"

"I believe in your abilities," Bruce replies robotically, but Dick isn't finished.

"Nobody lets me," he whines. "You get mad; Damian threw a pen at my eye; and even if he lets me within a ten foot radius, Jason's heavier than a ton of bricks. But Timmy's not that mean, are you?"

Tim draws away from Bruce and slumps against Dick's arms. His stomach flips as Dick gathers him up bridal style. He has a vague recollection of an argument about not being four, but at the moment, he can't bring himself to care. Dick is warm, and his heartbeat is steady white noise. The stegosaurus rests in the crook of one of his elbows.

"You're insufferable," Bruce says, though his voice is warm.

Tim feels Dick's laugh rise up from his stomach and reverberate through his ribs. "I think you mean charming."

He buries his face into the soft cotton of Dick's shirt and breathes in the faint scent of Alfred's fabric softener.

He dimly feels Dick start walking, and someone murmuring something somewhere, but he is comfortable and drifting. A hand pats his arm. A brush of cool air. A radio rambling. The thrum of the car beneath him.

He is safely on his way back to a deep sleep when Dick pokes his side. "We're home."

His head lolls against Dick's shoulder. "Be my prince."

"Damian's staring at us through the front window," Dick admits. "And I don't know how he'd feel about that."

Tim certainly doesn't know how to feel about that, since what does it matter if Damian watches Dick carry him inside? Dick is sharable. And Tim is tired and doesn't give two shits. If Damian wants to antagonize him for it, then he could have at it so long as Tim is able to sleep ASAP.

He feels Dick shift beneath him. "Come on, buddy."

"Carry me," he pleads, one last time. But Dick merely takes him by the under arms and sets him on his feet.

He blinks his eyes blearily and glares at the Mansion and its stupidly long porch with its stupid steps and the stupid hall with the stupid stairs that would lead him down a longer, more stupid hall which would finally lead him to his room…

Dick pats his back. He takes a reluctant step forward to follow after Bruce, and only just musters the energy to smile at Alfred while the butler holds the door open.

Damian is waiting for them in the hall. His nose is scrunched.

"Back so soon?" he spits. "A pity. I was hoping to have the whole morning to myself -"

But Tim has no time for games.

Tim has time for sleep.

He brushes past him, much to Damian's obvious indignation, and stumbles out into the living room before crashing blissfully onto the couch. Normally, being draped half over the couch's arm wouldn't be comfortable. Today, it will more than suffice.

"Tim." He feels someone tug a strand of hair near the nape of his neck.

"Drake," Damian demands. "I was sitting there. Drake. Get up. Drake. _Drake, you're being intolerable. Drake!"_

* * *

"Fuck you," he murmurs just before he opens his eyes to Dick - _again -_ poking his side. But holy _shit_ his throat hurts.

"You're mean when you're sick," Dick whines, but waves a medicine cup in front of his face.

"I'm not sick," he mumbles. "I _feel_ sick. There's a difference."

Dick rolls his eyes and puts his wrist against Tim's forehead before he can jerk away. "You're warm, baby."

"I was sleeping."

"Yes -" Dick pats his cheek - "because you're sick." He thrusts the medicine cup under Tim's nose - it smells like grape-flavoured rubber - and makes airplane sounds.

Tim snatches it from him, squeezes his eyes shut, and downs it. The consequent pain in his throat radiates all the way up through his ears, and before he knows it, tears well in his eyes unbidden. His eyes screw tighter.

Dick apologizes and it doesn't sound like pity so much as a real, true, genuine apology.

"Water?" he prompts, and Tim doesn't want any, but the aftertaste in his mouth is thick and sickly sweet. He takes the offered glass, makes himself take three sips, and then buries his head underneath one of the couch pillows.

* * *

Bruce looks sufficiently uncomfortable the next time Tim wakes. He sits back on his heels and holds out another Barbie popsicle. Tim takes pity on him and accepts it.

"What'd you do? Lose a bet?" he whispers.

"Dick said I wouldn't be able to make you take this." He holds up another medicine cup.

Tim narrows his eyes at it and then turns his gaze upon Bruce. Bruce's smile is weak.

"You owe me," he mutters.

* * *

" _These white men are dangerous."_

"An understatement, really," Damian remarks. "This movie is dissatisfactory. Pocahontas doesn't even exist."

Dick performs a dramatic inhale and nearly chokes. "You take that _back,_ Dami! That was completely uncalled for. Of course, Pocahontas is real! There are books about her and everything!"

"The American education system has truly failed you."

"Um, the American education system knows a lot more about Pocahontas than you do."

"The American education system feeds children cardboard pizza and lies."

The room is dim, and all the lights have been turned off, leaving the blue of the T.V. to fall softly over the walls and across his face. Damian commandeers the armchair, and Titus has the opposite sofa. Dick lays flat on the floor, pillow clutched to his chest.

What unnerves Tim is that there is another body - much closer to him - sitting _right beneath him_. At first he thinks it's Bruce, but he can't imagine Bruce voluntarily joining one of Dick's movie nights, and Bruce has salt-and-pepper hair along the sides of his face and not a shock of white in the front.

Jason tilts his head back and gives Tim a madman's smile. "The princess awakens."

It takes Tim another minute to process his presence, and then a second minute to muster out an extremely dignified, "what?"

"I heard about your little adventure," Jason replies, which means that Dick can't keep his mouth shut about Tim's malfunctional immune system. "I got mine out a few months after I started staying with Bruce. He was a total dweeb about it."

Tim didn't know Jason's tongue could form the word 'dweeb' but decides that there isn't any other word to describe Bruce over the past few hours.

He feels the lump under him and pulls it out to show Jason. The stegosaur is slightly creased in the neck from where it had been folded between Tim and the couch cushions. "He bought Barbie popsicles, too."

Jason laughs and squeezes the animal's squished nose. "Bruce got me a dog - stuffed. God, what does it say about us that I have to clarify something like that?"

Tim shrugs and yawns. Winces when that hurts.

Jason flicks his forehead. "You've been sleeping this whole time. To be honest, it's a little unnerving."

Tim hums.

"I'm about to sic Dick on you," Jason says.

"Don't," Tim pleads, and when Jason gets Dick's attention, he pretends to be asleep. By the time Dick comes with the damn medicine cup, he's out.


	2. Day Two

**I do not own Batman, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or Nat Geo Wild. And character opinions on that second one do not reflect on the author's own opinions.**

 **That's a**

 **That's a joke. Kind of. Eh?**

 **Enjoy my hours of research and a I-Was-Born-to-Be-Difficult-Tim Drake, please and thank you.**

* * *

There is pain in his throat and pulsing in his jaw and his ears and behind his eyeballs.

"Timmy?" Dick pleads.

Hell, it hurts to _breathe._

He hiccups and this - this is what getting stabbed through the jugular must feel like. Maybe Damian had gotten fed up with his taking over the couch. But, shit, shit, triple _shit._

"Hey," Dick prompts. There is an edge of worry to his voice, but another hiccup drives the knives in his throat deeper, and he can't bring the heels of his hands away from his eyes at first. When Dick pulls them away, his eyes remain squeezed shut.

 _Holy balls._

"Baby."

He opens his eyes and looks pleadingly at his brother. Dick bops his nose.

"Who wants a nice dose of hydrocodone, lovingly crushed and mixed with water by the highly esteemed Alfred Pennyworth?"

Tim hiccups again and all he can do is stare up at the ceiling and wait for the pain to radiate away. It doesn't.

Dick's fingers brush his forehead. He closes his eyes against it and stays that way, even when he feels Dick kiss his temple.

"You still have a little fever. I'm sorry, buddy."

His eyes feel swollen in their sockets. His mouth is dry and sticky and sour and he wants to brush his teeth, but honestly he thinks opening his mouth might make him cry.

"Want a popsicle?"

He shakes his head as carefully as he can.

"Well, would you eat one?"

Another shake.

"Could you?"

He stares at Dick and lets him figure it out for himself. Then Tim hiccups again and he bites his tongue with a gasp. Dick makes a whimpering noise for him and thrusts the water-hydrocodone solution into his hands.

"It'll make it better," he promises, but it sounds more like he's just trying to convince himself.

So Tim tries - he puts the straw to his mouth and forces himself to take two sips - _two! -_ before his pain level jumps from a seven to a nine and then he hiccups again and it shoots to an eleven and a half.

Maybe a sinkhole would open up. That would be nice. Sinkholes are the result of eroding limestone deposits, so they are really a southeast problem, but Gotham is east, so sinkholes aren't completely out of the picture, right? With the amount of potholes in Gotham's streets, they definitely had to be possible. It's only a matter of time.

Hopefully that time was soon. Preferably right now, at this moment, and right beneath Tim.

Dick pleads with him. Bargains with him. Threatens him with seventies music. He pokes the straw at Tim's lips, but Tim keeps his teeth clenched and does his best to ignore it.

Dick finally gives up with a sigh and sets the glass on a coaster. "I'll leave this here, then. Do you want anything?"

He shakes his head again and, after a moment, mouths, 'thank you.'

Dick just smiles at him.

* * *

"Ooh," Jason hisses inwards through his teeth. "Second day is the worst, huh?"

 _A brilliant observation._

"You know, the tricky thing about painkillers is that you actually have to take them, first."

 _Truly astute powers of deduction._

"Dick's been moping all morning. He started 'helping' Alfred out by dusting portraits, but he ended up breaking the glass of the one in the upstairs sitting room, so now he's on grocery duty. I have no idea why Alfred thought that would be better. Dick doesn't do grocery lists, and he'll come home with Strawberry Twinkies or Birthday Cake Oreos or some other shit like that. What are you watching?"

Tim's eyes are watering through Keeping Up with the Kardashians. He's tired and he's achy and he'll bitch how ever much he wants about it.

"Tim, this show is crap."

Tim shows him the middle finger.

"Come on. You can't like this shit. Put something else on - anything else on. Like…" he pauses, roams through the channels, and then gestures to Nat Geo Wild. "Like a documentary. You like documentaries."

Tim watches a lion take down an African buffalo. Jason whistles and, eyes still trained on the screen, shakes a cup of ice in front of Tim's face. Tim goes to snatch it, but Jason jerks it away and replaces it with an applesauce garnished with a crushed pill.

Tim makes no move to take it.

"Come on," Jason says, watching the lions rip into the buffalo. "Give me something to hold over good ole Dickie's head."

It would be a compelling argument if it didn't mean that Dick would be on Tim in a second.

"Babybird," Jason says. He taps Tim's thigh with the spoon. "Hey, Babybird. Babybird. Babybird. Babybird - woah, did you see that fucker tear that antelope's throat out? - Babybird, Babybird, Babybird, Babybird, B-"

Tim rips the spoon out of Jason's hand and tosses it over his shoulder. He hears it clatter on the hardwood, and Jason makes a half-mocking squawk, but Tim steals the applesauce away from him and tips it into his mouth.

Jason smiles at him, smug. Dick might inadvertently get on Tim's nerves, but Jason - big bad Red Hood - considers it a _skill._

* * *

Damian looks down at him, clicks his tongue, throws a bottle of ibuprofen at him, and leaves.

* * *

He can hear the family having dinner in the room over. The tinny sound of Jason tossing a fork. A snarl from Damian. A bark from Titus, a laugh from Dick. A flat reprimand from Alfred, a low order from Bruce.

Tim glares at the still unfinished icewater.

* * *

"I've always wondered how anything has managed to live in such a desolate place," Alfred remarks. They are watching a documentary on the Antarctic and Arctic. Bruce and Damian have gone out patrolling, which made Dick tag along, which somehow pissed Jason off, because Bruce had barred him from going with, and to solve the whole thing Bruce barred Dick, too, and now Dick and Jason were dueling it out on the mats downstairs while Batman and Robin slipped into the night.

Tim watches an Arctic fox get stuck in a snowbank while letting a sliver of Barbie popsicle melt on his tongue.

An hour later, and Alfred retires, letting his hand linger on the foot Tim lets hang from over the arm of the couch before turning out the lights, telling Tim to get some sleep.

Tim does not get any sleep.

The T.V. bathes the walls in soft blue and pastel lights. The documentaries melt into one another. Tim can't lay flat, and the pain in his throat has spiked.

He wonders if Dick and Jason are done yet. If Batman and Robin are coming back soon. Maybe everyone is asleep - came back without his noticing.

He gets up and steadies himself on the couch, black spots like static in his eyes as the blood rushes from his head. He unlocks his knees and takes heavy steps towards the grandfather clock in the study.

He's slow down the steps, because his knees feel like they've absorbed all his weight from a jump, when he's hardly moved from the couch all day. There is a Tim-shaped indent in the cushions. He hid it with blankets.

Jason and Dick are both still on the mats, though Dick is splayed out on his back while Jason sits next to him, sweat dripping off his nose and his chin onto the floor. He looks up when he sees Tim on the stairs. His eyebrows disappear beneath sweaty bangs. "Babybird?"

Dick lifts his head at Tim's nickname and squints at Tim before rolling over and wiping his face on his shirt. "What are you doing down here?"

 _I can't sleep. I'm in pain. Also, I am ninety-five percent sure that the living room is haunted._

But he just waits until Dick hops to his feet and takes Tim's face in his hands to mouth the first part, moving his mouth as little as possible.

Pity shapes Dick's face. "I don't think you're going to find it down here."

Tim shrugs.

"Did you take your antibiotics?"

Another shrug.

"Painkillers?"

A half-half nod.

" _Timmy."_

He hikes his shoulders, spreads his hands, and mouths, "What?"

Dick shakes his head. Jason rolls his eyes and snorts, asks, "So what are you planning on doing down here? Work?"

"That wasn't a suggestion, Timmy," Dick says quickly, looking pointedly at Jason when Tim's shoulders begin to hike. "Go back upstairs." He moves as if to pick him up, but Tim feints left before making a beeline for a chair in front of the Batcomputer. Dick makes a noise like a stuck pig, but Jason laughs.

"Let him be. I'd be going out of my mind if I had you looking after me, too."

"I am _responsible."_

"You had a mullet, Dickiebird. I beg to differ."

"It wasn't a _mullet._ I grew it out -"

"Which means that you admit, you did have a mullet at one point -"

"What do you have against mullets?"

"Nothing, I just associate them with you, that's all."

Tim leans back in his chair as Dick tries to pull Jason into a roll. It is an ill-thought out move, since Jason weighs more than Bruce, and moving him when he doesn't want to is like pushing an oak tree. Or getting Bruce to smile.

Nevertheless, Dick tries it, so Jason ducks and grabs his legs. Dick kicks his feet out on the mats and leaves sweaty streaks on the floor.

They last another two minutes before Dick's arm is deemed to flexible to be in danger of being broken.

But neither of them actually says they've had enough. They lay there on the mats a while, but then Jason holds Dick down until Dick kicks his feet in the air and flips onto Jason's back.

"Guns spoil you," Dick teases, and the fight begins anew. Jason becomes more aggressive, and the smile on Dick's face drops as he has to concentrate on not getting suffocated by two hundred and twenty-five pounds of muscle and angst.

"Fat," he gasps as Jason sits on him and reaches for a choke. Dick jerks his head away and struggles to get out from under him. He spins onto his side, and it looks cool, but Jason merely flips onto his stomach and all of Dick's air comes out with an 'oompf'.

"You were saying?" Jason hisses.

Dick worms his way around to face him and hooks his legs over Jason's back. For a split-second Jason leans, and it's enough. Jason is big.

Dick is flexible.

He snakes his arms through to Jason's wrists and pulls, swinging his legs up and onto Jason's shoulders and jerking his arms forward. Tim hears Jason's curse. The two separate - Jason slides off Dick with a huff - and their panting echoes.

"You're just rusty," Dick says, getting onto his hands and knees.

"I'm not _rusty._ You're just not human."

Dick's head swivels to Tim's. "So," he starts, still speaking to Jason, "you're admitting that I'm better at jujitsu?"

Tim's eyebrows rise and he looks to Jason. Jason scowls back and pushes his bangs up from his forehead.

"Don't put words in my mouth."

"I'm not. I'm just asking."

"Well, your stand-up sucks."

"My stand-up does _not_ suck."

"Your left hook was shit."

"No one ever even _uses_ the left hook!"

"That's what makes it _great."_

* * *

Tim wakes up with a start - Bat habit - and punches first, thinks second.

Jason luckily catches his right hand, but turns his head and says, "See? I told you, Dickhead."

"Oh, I know he'd do it. If I can't get you at stand-up, Tim _definitely_ could."

Tim gives Jason a smile. Jason narrows his eyes.

"Don't get any big ideas. I could steamroll you in your sleep."

"You're too fat to sneak up on me," he half whispers, half mouths. Jason throws his hands into the air.

* * *

The Batmobile rolls in silently, a whoosh of air on the back of Tim's neck. He hears the door close, Robin go on about a dent in the side, and Batman's vexation.

Oh, yes. Batman's vexation is an audible thing.

"Tim."

Tim keeps his eyes glued on one screen in front of him. He has notes sprawled across the desk, and he has multiple screens on with multiple windows open on each.

"Tim."

There was a new guy running around. Had to be new, because they robbed that Mediterranean place on Eighth, and that Mediterranean place also just happened to leave pita wraps on their rooftop, because it was a _Batman and Robin frequented rooftop._

"Timothy Jackson."

Tim stops tapping his pen.

" _Upstairs."_

He sighs and gets up, ignoring Robin's crossed arms and scrunched nose as Batman pulls back his cowl and becomes Bruce - Overworked Father To the Tenth Degree - to take Tim by the upperarm and march him up the stairs.

Dick is asleep in the armchair, mouth open and with legs and arms tucked and hanging in a position no one in their right mind would deem comfortable. The nature channel is still on.

"Dick," Bruce growls.

Dick, like any good Bat, near knocks the lamp off the end table when he gets up with a _snork._

"B?" he asks, steadying the lamp before it can fall.

"Where's Jason?"

"Uh? I don't know. He doesn't tell me. He's either upstairs or out. Why?" He perks up a little, voice becoming more urgent. Tim feels bad for him. "Did he do something?"

"Why was Tim downstairs?"

Dick's eyes fall upon him. "We - I mean, he came down a little after you left, and then went upstairs with us."

"Tim," Bruce says, and Tim's shoulders rise up to his ears.

"I got bored," he mouths to Dick and tries to look sheepish.

"He got bored," Dick parrots.

"I don't care -" oh, Bruce was pulling out the _Big Three_ \- "you're supposed to be watching him."

Tim feels worse, and he lowers his eyes to the floor and shrugs Bruce's hand off his shoulder.

"I _was_ watching him," Dick protests. "I just -"

"Go to bed, Tim," is all Bruce says before disappearing. Robin, behind him, lingers just enough to flick the back of Tim's head. Damian's nails are needles.

Tim sits down heavily on the couch and doesn't look at Dick. Dick doesn't look at him.

His stomach twists, and Tim passes the rest of the night listening to David Attenborough narrate _Life._

* * *

 ** _Do you know how much time I spent making sure that last sentence was right?_**

 ** _a ridiculous amount of time. (It could be Oprah?)_**


	3. Day Three through Five

**No regrets.**

 **Also, just a note - thank you so much to those who have read, reviewed, faved and followed. It means a lot and makes my day!**

* * *

Alfred comes in and announces breakfast, and Tim hears Dick hop out of his chair and pad into the kitchen. Tim stays slumped in the curve of the couch. A popsicle goes whizzing past his ear, and it's only by sheer instinct that he snatches it out of the air.

Jason takes over Dick's armchair, opting to sit on the arm rather than the cushion. He has a biscuit sandwich in his mouth and another one in his hand. Tim suspects he's already eaten a third. In his free hand is an applesauce with another crushed pill, which he sets down in front of Tim. There's a call for Jason in the kitchen - something about getting crumbs on the carpet.

Jason rolls his eyes. "Better?" he asks Tim.

Tim continues to stare at the television.

"National parks, huh? Never been to one. I think. Hey, eat your applesauce."

Tim scrapes off the top and hopes it's enough to satisfy Jason, even though he abandons the popsicle on the coffee table.

Jason snorts. Finishes his second biscuit, tears at his third.

"Dick's not mad."

Of course Dick isn't mad. Dick doesn't get mad. Bruce gets mad. Dick gets upset.

"I won't lie, going down and hanging out in the Cave by yourself wasn't your most brilliant of ideas, but Bats didn't have to have a fit about it."

He didn't mean to have Bruce call Dick out and go all Disappointed Dad mode. He just - he couldn't sleep - and time had that funny way of passing faster in the Cave - and he could get work done - and he wasn't going to stay long; Dick's alarm for Tim's antibiotics was going to go off within the next two hours anyway - but it just so happened that the Batmobile had rolled in and Batman must have not had a good night, and -

"Don't feel bad about it. Dick's just a goodie-two-shoes that can't stand the possibility of losing a gold star. He's been trained to the horrors of the American education system."

Tim shrugs.

"Eat your goddamn popsicle."

Tim eats half of it before folding it and sticking it in the unfinished applesauce. Jason makes a face as the syrups mix.

A black bear emerges from hibernation and bumbles out into the sunlight. Jason points at it and says around his last mouthful of breakfast, "Looks like Bruce."

* * *

He wants to tell Damian to get out, but the pain in his throat has risen back up to an eight and all he can do is glare. Damian puts on an innocent look as he starts practicing kata in the middle of the living room.

Tim swings his legs off the couch and stalks out.

Who cared if he was downstairs? He'd lost his tonsils, not his common sense. The lack of tonsils did not make him an invalid. He _hurt,_ but he wasn't totally incapable of taking care of himself.

He wanders. Walks down the hall with the creepy portraits. Trots up the stairs with the shaky railing. Keeps his eyes forward, pretends he doesn't notice that Damian tails him. Little demon _thinks_ he's some kind of phantom hunter but doesn't realize that he _radiates_ the stench of _emotional baggage._

Or that there shouldn't even be the barest of breezes in a still hallway.

How dare Bruce set watchdogs on him. Now it's a _challenge._

He ducks into a bathroom and locks the door. If Damian wants to follow him...well, disturbing.

He stands on top of the toilet lid and unhinges the vent above as quietly as he can. He sets it on the sink before hopping from toilet lid to counter to pull himself up into the vents. He reaches down and replaces the screen just as the doorknob rattles and the call of " _Drake?"_ comes from the other side of the door.

The inside of Tim's nose prickles with the start of a sneeze. He's not _in_ the vent pipes but actually just _near_ them, but it's dusty and he is pressed in on all sides. His elbows rub as he army crawls.

He pulls his shirt up and over the lower half of his face and wishes momentarily for a rebreather. Even withholding sneezes is a little like stabbing himself in the jugular.

The house settles around him. Creaks. He snorts lightly, and the sound echoes and reverberates back to him.

He takes a right and hopes the map inside of his head is correct. There is a drop, and after some maneuvering to see if it continued, he lowers himself down.

" _Drake!"_

Damian is _much_ clearer. Too clear, like silverware against glass. Which means that Tim's little escapade is about to be shortly lived.

 _Shit._

He starts army crawling faster. Tim is skinny, but Damian is still a...kid...and he's still shorter than Tim. Less drag time.

Tim's head bumps against a pipe as Damian's voice clatters through the metal around them.

The next vent he sees, he kicks open and swings himself out into a sitting room. Dust plumes.

If Damian doesn't get to him first, Alfred will _maul_ him.

He opens the door slowly and goes to make a mad dash down the hall, only to -

"Tim?"

Curse Dick and his habit of being where Tim doesn't want him to be. Dick takes him by the shoulders and frowns.

"What are you running from?"

Tim shrugs. Flinches when Damian's voice comes muffled from somewhere down the hall.

Dick's frown deepens. "Dami?"

" _Get him!"_

Tim smiles as innocently as he can. His acting apparently needs some work, since Dick's eyes only narrow. He keeps a firm grip on Tim as he knocks against the wall and asks again, "Dami? What are you doing inside the wall?"

" _My job,"_ comes out as venomous as it would if Damian wasn't behind wood and plaster.

Tim catches Dick's wrist and escapes from under his grip before Dick can open his mouth. He locks himself in a studio room and moves a chair in front of the door. He uses a second one to help himself back into the vent system. He does a little climbing - using his knees and elbows - to heave himself up levels and does his very best to ignore any ominous echoing.

He makes it onto the roof and inhales fresh air. It's cold against his throat and he sighs. He estimates four minutes of bliss before Damian finds him.

"Master Timothy," Alfred calls from below. He and Jason are grocery-laden and have their necks craned up to see him. "Might I bother to ask what the bloody hell you're doing up there?"

* * *

Tim can't sleep.

Tonight, it's not just because of his throat or someone waking him up every two hours with hydrocodone or antibiotics, but because Bruce is _staring_ at him.

Tim thinks he should see an eye doctor. Nobody should have to blink that little.

Robin was a little more than _miffed_ when he learned that Batman was taking a personal day (night?), but left for patrol easily enough when Nightwing bounded out with him. Red Hood had swung out on his bike earlier.

Which left Tim with Bruce and National Geographic.

If Tim was at least allowed his laptop, he might be able to stand it. But his laptop had mysteriously disappeared from his bed on Doomsday.

"Sleep," Bruce says. It's the third time he's said it in the past two hours. Tim wonders when he'll figure out that Tim _can't_ sleep. His sleep schedule is shit as it is, but right now, which everything from the neck up pulsing, he couldn't sleep even if he wanted to.

And he _wanted_ to. He's only managed two or three twenty-minute increments since the anesthesia wore off.

He unfolds his legs and stretches across the couch. He can't seem to lay flat yet, so he's stolen all the pillows in the near vicinity and used them as he saw fit. Despite it all, his neck is stiff and his back is sore from days of manning the couch. At first, he didn't go to his room because he was too tired to put up with _stairs._ Now he's not allowed to because nobody trusts him to go on another adventure through his vents (and well they should).

Bruce's phone beeps. Tim peels off the lid of a jello and passes it to him. Bruce unfolds a tin foil wrapped crushed pill and shakes it out on the top before passing it back.

Tim, as he did with the applesauce, consequently only shaves off as much as he can take and swallows. His eyes pinch, and he sets the spoon on top of the cup with finality.

"More," Bruce orders, because his vocal chords are evidently only capable of producing one syllable.

Tim pushes the jello away with his foot. Bruce gives a heavy sigh.

"Popsicle?"

Oh, call the Ghostbusters - a whopping two syllables. Bruce must be possessed.

"Eat."

When Tim does not immediately comply, Bruce sticks the spoon in his hand. Tim lets it drop. Bruce replaces it. Tim lets it drop. Bruce replaces it. Tim sticks the spoon beneath his pillow ramp.

"You're being difficult."

Six syllables? Is hell frozen over?

" _Jason_ wasn't this difficult."

Tim gives him an arched eyebrow, like _what's that supposed to mean?_ But instead mouths, "I'll tell Jason you said that."

"They were just _tonsils,_ Tim."

Tim stares Bruce up and down. Bruce rubs his nose, gets up, and holds Tim's face. The pads at the base of his fingers are rough and calloused, but his hands are otherwise still billionaire-soft. Courtesy of Kevlar gloves.

"At least your fever's gone," he sighs resignedly, retracting his hands. "Though I wish you'd eat more than just two popsicles a day - no, I'm not counting your spoonfuls of applesauce. Because they're just spoonfuls."

Tim wonders at how he can possibly get it through Bruce's thick battered skull that swallowing is currently equivalent to having knives shoved down his throat.

Bruce disappears behind the couch. Tim can hear water running in the kitchen - he must have retrieved the spoon - before he returns with the spoon back in his hand. He sets it in the jello and places it before Tim. He mistakes Tim's gaze for wariness, and promises, "It's a new spoon."

Tim doesn't care if it is a new spoon. The likelihood of his eating the Jello is equal to the likelihood of Bruce laughing, Dick eating broccoli, Jason being amiable, Damian not wanting to kill him, Alfred dropping a plate.

Bruce goes back to Silent Staring mode, which is just fine with Tim. He's busy watching _Trials of the Wild._ Monarch butterflies going from Mexico to Canada and back: a true classic.

The hours start to melt into one another, and it's 4:45 in the morning _(The Incredible Dr. Pol)_ when he hears footsteps coming down the stairs. At first he thinks it's Alfred, but then he hears, "I can't believe you socked me in the face."

"I didn't mean to!" Dick protests. "You snuck up on me!"

"Excuse me for overestimating your abilities of _observation."_

"I was - you know - preoccupied. Did you see the flip Damian did? I taught him that. I did."

"For the last time, it was _instinct,_ Grayson."

"Muscle memory."

"I've done simple things such as a _flip_ before."

"But the kick, and the using the one guy for leverage - that was one of my favorite moves. Just admit it, Dami, I'm rubbing off and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Do you want a bruise to match Todd's, Grayson?"

"I know your threats are just your twisted version of love."

"You are _testing_ me."

Jason made it into view first, an icepack pressed against the left side of his face. Damian storms in immediately after, Dick pulling up behind. The latter two go into the kitchen - Tim can hear cabinets opening and closing, Damian telling Dick to close the refrigerator door - but Jason lingers, flopping onto the armchair opposite to Bruce.

"The Incredible Doctor Pol?"

"Get some sleep, Jason."

"Don't tell me what do."

Bruce reaches for the remote and _turns the T.V. off,_ as if Tim _hasn't been using it to retain his sanity._

"Well, since I'm not _wanted,_ " Jason grumbles, heaving himself off the chair and wandering into the kitchen. All the lights Dick has turned on leaks from the hall over the couch, just a thin sliver. Everything else is dark.

Tim's eye twitches.

A few minutes later, and he hears footsteps coming closer and a yawn.

"Oh, good, they're both sleeping."

"And I think they have brilliant ideas."

But Dick and Jason are wrong.

Tim is _not_ sleeping. He waits just enough to hear Bruce (he does snore) before going to the T.V. and turning it back on _manually,_ like someone from the Stone Age.

And that's how Bruce finds him an hour and a half later, when the alarm goes off at Let's Bother Tim O'Clock.

He doesn't protest when Tim only accepts a single spoonful of jello, but takes the tinfoil and goes into the kitchen. Tim can hear him rummaging around, and he thinks Bruce might be searching for something to bribe him with, but he instead returns with two icepacks.

"I have an idea," he says. "Courtesy of Jason."

He settles down besides Tim, who shifts over. He doesn't expect it when Bruce picks him up and sets him on his other side, and immediately tenses until Bruce lays Tim's head on his heart.

"Better?" he asks, and props the ice packs up against Tim's throat.

Tim sleeps through the next episode of Dr. Pol.

* * *

He doesn't know exactly what heaven must be like - not _all_ Bats are dead set (pun intended) on leaving the land of the living - but Tim decides that it must include purple Gatorade.

He has his hood pulled over his head, cheek against the cool marble of the kitchen island. He spins the Gatorade bottle and lets his feet swing happily near the legs of his stool.

He still hasn't slept a total of three hours over the past three days, but hot _damn_ doesn't Gatorade do wonders. It's a miracle drink. Nectar of the gods. Water from the Fount of Immortality.

 _Grape._

"So you _aren't_ attached to the sofa," Dick laughs, ruffling his hair from behind before moving to sit beside him. He doesn't seem so put out about Tim's escapades. Dick's a morning person. Sometimes he thinks there should be a scientific study on how much of the sun Dick absorbs.

He makes a humming noise and lifts his head to take another sip. Dick laughs.

" _And_ you're - what did you call it? Up at the asscrack of dawn? I didn't even know you functioned at 6 o'clock."

"Neither did I," he sighs. "Don't know how I feel about it, so don't remind me."

Dick snorts and pulls the milk from the fridge. "Alfie up?"

"Alfred's always up - he's downstairs with Bruce. What are you doing?"

Dick pauses from where he was retrieving a box of cereal and gestures to Tim with an empty bowl. "Um, cooking up a five-course meal? What's it look like?"

"No - what are _you_ doing up? You just got back -" Tim looks at the clock on the microwave - "not even two hours ago."

"The stomach calls. Hey - do you want to try eating something?"

Tim's smile drops and he bites the inside of his cheek. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Bruce was trying to get me to eat Jello all night."

"But you hate Jello."

"Exactly."

Dick throws him an ice cream carton, which he catches and inspects. Dick then chucks him a spoon over his shoulder, and Tim has to reach to keep it from clattering to the floor.

"Just do it," he says, smiling, and then flexes his arms down and repeats it in the rough, attackish kind of way exercise people do on television. " _Just DO it!"_

"Vine is dead, Dick." He pops of the top of the ice cream. "Let's keep it that way."

"Nothing stays dead in this family, Timbo. And certainly not Vine. Oh - mint? We like mint." He sticks his spoon in Tim's ice cream and makes a face. "Ah, it's your frozen water stuff."

"Does this look like a popsicle to you?"

"I can't believe people let this stuff be considered ice cream. I bet it was made with skim milk. And skim milk is just milk-colored water."

Tim licks his spoon and just lets a chocolate shaving melt in his mouth.

"Really, Tim. It's, like - a sacrilege. - Ah, morning, Alfie."

"Good morning, Master Dick. Master Tim."

Tim hums in acknowledgment and leans his head against Alfred's arm when he lays his hand on Tim's shoulder. "Morning. Bruce coming?"

"He is...currently occupied. Master Dick, do you plan on staying up, or is this just another early morning snack?"

"Yes," Dick says.

* * *

"Please," Bruce stresses, and he hardly ever pleads for anything. "Please, please, _please,_ don't make me regret this."

"You won't," Tim promises.

Bruce still doesn't look convinced, but nonetheless slides Tim his favorite weapon. It's metallic and glinting and _oh,_ Tim has been _itching_ for this:

His laptop.

Bruce, after receiving confirmation that Tim has, in fact, "eaten", caved enough to allow it to Tim, with the caveat that the Cave is still off-limits until his say-so. And no, the laptop certainly isn't the Batcomputer, but it also _certainly_ _isn't the Batcomputer._ Bruce doesn't have to know what Tim has on it (things like Tim's own hypotheses, studies, profiles, cases, Hulu account).

He spends all afternoon unraveling a series of assaults with Nat Geo Wild still bubbling in the background. Most of them occur at the end of Tenth, which seems random except Tim knows that there's _definitely_ a 7/11 down there.

Not to insult 7/11s or anything, but...things get a little sketch past eight.

He was just saying.

Some of them occur by the pier, too, though, so he can't blame a sketchy 7/11 for that. But both were instances of robbery, which is odd. He means, robberies _aren't_ odd, but the fact that the assaults have similar _descriptions_ while occurring at two different places sometimes in a single night is 'odd'. Maybe they aren't connected at all, maybe there's some kind of criminal tag team going on here, or - stretching it - someone's running through Gotham night traffic to hit two places in one night.

They've got to be new, though, like the Mediterranean place guy. Because the pier isn't exactly the most subtle of places to do crime, especially in a place like Gotham.

First few hours, and he actually does eat/drink whatever is put in front of him. But then he's completely sucked in, and when Damian leaves him a hydocodone Jello and disappears, he takes advantage of it (what? He and Damian aren't exactly on _amiable_ terms, and he actually hates Jello). So he hides it, with the self-promise he'll get it in a few minutes.

Just another minute.

But before he knows it another two hours must have passed, because a popsicle goes flying at his head. He catches it and puts the tip in his mouth. He means to tear off the top. He just needs to finish this sentence.

Footsteps creak on the hardwood, and he hides it with the Jello under the couch. He nudges it all further back with his foot.

It's Alfred with another purple Gatorade. He pats Tim's shoulder as he lowers it on the table, tells Tim that he's glad he's feeling better.

Tim is glad, too. There was a missing persons case from last Tuesday, and he's just traced a new drug dealer down by Gotham Public #12. He'll have to forward it to Jason, let the Red Hood handle it.

He leans forwards and sips at the Gatorade. Grimaces when it sends shooting pains up and down his throat. He missed those pain meds, right.

He's getting up to fetch the pill bottle when his laptop dings once, twice, and then in an ever-rapid succession as more and more reports light up in the top right corner of his screen. He sits back down and glances out the window - the light is fading, but it's still a couple hours before dark yet. A crime in the daylight is...suspicious.

He bites the inside of his cheek, wishes Bruce had just suddenly 'found' his phone, and beings to sort through the alerts.

The first thing he notices is that the alerts aren't about a crime, which is relieving.

The second thing he notices are reports on what is possibly a UFO, possibly Superman.

Both spell trouble.

He huffs and gets up.

* * *

"So, which is it?" he asks. "Aliens, or...alien singular?"

Bruce lifts his head from where it leaned towards the Batcomputer. "I thought I told you you weren't allowed down here until I said so."

Tim points to his feet, which are perfectly placed on the edge of the last step. "And technically, I am not 'down here'."

Bruce shakes his head and mutters something he can't hear. Tim takes it as an invitation and spins in the chair next to him. "Do I get an answer?"

"I don't think it's aliens," Bruce answers patiently. "And I hope you haven't been on that laptop all day."

"I haven't." He looked out the window a few times, and minute breaks were still breaks. "Are -" and he considers himself for a nanosecond, judges the situation before pushing on - casually - "we going out?"

Bruce opens his mouth. Closes it. Turns his wary gaze on Tim. Tim opens his hand and raises his eyebrows innocently.

Because, yeah, even if Bruce wasn't in the cowl he was still _Batman, a.k.a. The World's Greatest Detective,_ but it still didn't hurt to see how far Tim could push his limits.

"You," Bruce says firmly, "are not going out until I say so."

"Oh - I wasn't meaning _me._ I just meant - " and he waves his hand vaguely above his head - "you know. We. Collectively. As in, Bats."

Bruce's eyes narrow.

"I can deploy a drone."

A muscle in Bruce's cheek jumps, but he lets Tim get it.

 _And that, ladies and gentlemen,_ he thinks as he traces its altitude, _is progress._

* * *

"Well, you were right," he says a quarter hour later. Reports are still glowing at the corner of his laptop, but it has slowed. "It's not aliens."

Bruce leans back in his chair and rubs at his face. "To our current knowledge."

"It's still an unidentified flying object." Dick taps Tim's wrist. "Go back around - what's that blinking?"

Tim frowns. "It's emitting a signal."

"To what?"

Tim zooms out his screen. "To multiple locations throughout Gotham."

Robin comes running in and jumps on the hood of the Batmobile. "Good. I'll drive."

* * *

He really has to hand it to the criminals, this time. Victory delinquents. Tim's impressed and also wondering if he could have come up with it himself:

Geocache. Gothamized.

" _Now,"_ Red Hood grumbles. His voice is muffled and staticky as the sound of rain penetrates through the connection. " _Remind me why we're doing this_ now, _again?"_

" _Stop complaining, Hood,"_ Robin bites.

" _Says the one in a nice, warm, roofed_ Batmobile."

" _It's not that cold out here,"_ Nightwing chimes. " _Just - "_

Something clangs and Nightwing lets out a string of curses. " _Shit - balls - fuck -"_

" _Report,"_ Batman demands.

Nightwing's heavy breathing makes the back of Tim's neck prickle. " _S'all good. Just slipped. It's - ah - It's fairly rainy out here."_

" _Fairly,"_ Red Hood scoffs.

"Focus," Tim says above the rain pounding on the windows. Thunder rumbles loud enough to shake the whole house, and out of the corner of his eye, Tim watches the kitchen lights flicker. "Nightwing, there's something down in the front of Gotham Academy. I'd check the bushes, first. Hood, how's it going?"

" _Oh, swell, thanks. Just soaking wet and searching a fucking_ stadium _for something the size of a_ pill bottle."

"I said columns 1 through 20."

" _So I get to check under 200 seats and look through shit. Thank_ fuck."

" _Language,_ " someone says. " _Who's replacing me?"_

"Cut me some slack, Oracle," Tim replies. He takes a sip of Gatorade and winces. "I was bored. Do you know what's going on?"

" _Mysterious easter eggs sending out weird signals? Yes, I am aware. As is the GCPD. Your welcome, idiots."_

" _We were going to call them,"_ Nightwing pouts. " _We just wanted to see what they were, first."_

" _And what are they? Also, one in the alley between the deli and the convenience store."_

" _Not the dumpster! And I don't know. B?"_

" _He's driving," Robin answers, "and I've taken over observation, so he keeps his eyes on the road and doesn't make the mistake of thinking of a vehicle as a giant aluminum can. And evidence, upon first observations, is a small black box in a...small sealed, plastic container."_

" _And upon further observations?"_

" _A small black box in a small, sealed, plastic container."_

"What kind of container?" Tim asks. "And elaborate on 'sealed'. Ductaped? Welded -"

" _You can't weld plastic, imbecile."_

"Or just closed?"

" _It's an empty bottle of bubbles,"_ Batman explains.

"Sorry?"

" _An empty bottle of bubbles."_

"Would you - say that one more time?"

" _Have you suddenly misplaced your sense of hearing again?"_ Robin spits. " _It's an empty bottle of -"_

"Yeah, I know. I just wanted to hear Batman say 'bubbles' again. I didn't think he could do it."

Nightwing barks out a laugh, and Tim thinks Red Hood snorts.

"Focus," Batman growls.

" _Have you opened it?"_ Oracle asks.

" _Do you take us for half-wits?"_

" _What Robin_ means _to say is that I don't think he knows if there's anything_ else _inside,"_ Nightwing adds quickly. " _Here - I'm on top of the financial building. I'll open the one I have."_

" _Be careful."_

" _Noted."_

Tim can hear the exact moment Nightwing puts the rebreather in. His breath goes funny, like he's Darth Vader or something.

" _Opening it now,"_ he mumbles around it, but it sounds more like " _O'in' i' 'ow."_

Tim pulls up Nightwing's live status and bites the inside of his cheek. A minute passes. Nothing changes.

"' _Ook 'ood?"_

"Fine. Hey, do you think -"

And then Nightwing yelps. Tim feels something like a static shock run up his spine as all his breath whooshes from his lungs in a matter of seconds. The lights in the kitchen flicker precariously.

" _What? What?"_ Hood repeats, over and over.

" _Oh, dear god."_ Nightwing mutters shakily. " _I don't know where it went. Oh, god, oh, god -"_

" _Report."_

" _It's a hornet. It's a hornet. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Don't open the containers!"_

" _I don't think we have to,"_ Robin says ominously, and then the lights in the kitchen shudder out and the hair on Tim's arms and the back of his neck stand on end.

"Guys?"

He waits for the thrum of the generator, and the sudden return of light.

" _Ow - gaddammit - who turned out the lights?"_

" _Electricity's out all over Gotham."_

" _Brilliant observation, Oracle. Outstanding deductive reasoning."_

" _Do you want my help or not, Hood?"_

Tim is surrounded total darkness.

It is _darker_ than pitch black.

It is I'm-staring-into-the-abyss black.

Not that Tim is particularly scared of dark or anything, but usually there was _some_ light _somewhere,_ and he wasn't alone in the living room a large old mansion…

His laptop is giving off a ghostly light.

"Generators aren't coming on," he chimes after a second to process. "It's a blackout -" he steels himself to peer out the window - "everywhere. Anywhere."

" _Even…?"_ Nightwing trails.

"Everywhere," Tim repeats.

" _Are you okay?"_

"Contrary to popular belief, the darkness doesn't spontaneously spawn boogiemen."

" _I just mean - you're talking kind of funny."_

"I'm good," he affirms, and forces himself to speak louder. His throat has been irritated so that every syllable he utters is a needle.

Is it just him, or does Batman's usual silence feel judgemental? It feels judgemental.

Red Hood huffs. " _So drone, black box slash bee Geocache, and a blackout. In the middle of a thunderstorm. Coincidence? I think not."_

"It's not a bee," Tim says. "It's a robotic Oriental hornet."

" _And you figured this out...how?"_

"Detective skills."

Oracle barks. " _Looked up animals that conduct electricity, most likely. And then made the assumption that a tiny buzzing robot insect wasn't actually a tiny buzzing robot electric eel."_

* * *

 **in a universe where Gotham exists, people fit through vents.**

 **In a universe where Oriental hornets exist, I have fear.**


	4. Doomsday Take Two

**Tim: the reigning champ of the game 'How Difficult Can I Be?'**

 **I have zero regrets. This chapter was the most fun to write because it's a little silly. But - hey - we all need a little floof in our lives.**

 **Floof does not immediately come, though. You have to work for it. But only for, like, two minutes depending on your reading speed.**

 **No regrets for medical inaccuracies. Part of HelloHai charm.**

* * *

It's two hours later before they collect the rest of the Blackout Geocache, and another three before Tim and Oracle can track down the escapee robotic hornet for Nightwing. It's nearing light when it's all "done", excluding the new case they have on their hands.

And Tim just…

Crashes.

He thinks his eyes might be twitching. Maybe his whole face.

Oh god, he messed up.

Don't screw up the pain pills, they said. It'll be bad, they said. Seriously, Tim, _don't screw up your fucking pain pill medications._

Take it easy, Tim. Don't fuck yourself.

Tim had brilliantly, stupendously, titanically _fucked himself._

His nose tickles. He twitches it, tries to resist the oncoming sneeze, but he fails epically and -

* * *

\- "Tim? Tim, baby, you with me?"

His mouth tastes metallic. He rolls over and spits pink into a cup of melted crushed ice. Stares at it for a while.

Some sensical corner of his brain recalls his research on tonsillectomy complications. He is 70 percent sure spitting blood was a _huge_ no-no.

There's a hand on his shoulder. Dick, frowning, and Bruce just behind him, with a frownier frown, and Damian with a twin frownier frown.

Yeah. _So_ not good.

He thinks he might have some snot on his face, too. From when he sneezed and then _blacked out._ He goes to wipe it with his shirt, and when he brings his shaking hand away, he realizes that it's a lovely mixture of snot _and_ specks of blood.

Because why _wouldn't_ the universe hate him.

"Shit," he breathes.

"Yeah." Dick nods. Tries for a reassuring smile that falls flat. "Shit."

Jason, leaning above him, heaves him up by the armpits and sets him on his feet. "Field trip to Leslie's. Who's driving?"

"I've got it," Dick says. "You were out in the rain all night."

"Yeah, well, so were you, so what are you tryin' to say, huh?"

"If I'm not needed, then I'm headed up the stairs."

"Good idea, brat, you can go tell Alfred -"

"No! Don't wake Alfred up, Dami, he'll be up soon anyway -"

"Exactly! He's the best driver in all of Gotham. Wait, I take that back - the United States. No, the world. The Milky Way."

"But I can _drive -_ "

"Am I getting Pennyworth or not?"

"No." "Yes."

"Dick, you drive like it's first time you've been behind the wheel _ever._ "

"It's better than you!"

"I don't even want to drive, I think Alfred should -"

Bruce meets Tim's eyes and jerks his head outside. Tim follows him. They're getting in the car when Dick runs after them, shoving his feet into tennis shoes and grimacing as his socks hit the wet grass.

"I can drive," he calls.

But Bruce doesn't get out of the driver's seat, and Dick jogs around the side and opens up the passenger's side. He unbuckles Tim and slides in beneath him. Tim thinks he should protest - two people in one seat isn't safe - but Dick's arms are around him and he leans his head on Dick's shoulder with a shuddering sigh.

"I thought I was good," he whispers.

He doesn't think anybody hears him until Bruce says, "Not until I say so."

* * *

The stitches at the back of his throat tickle his gag reflex. His stomach, already roiling from anesthesia, empties itself on the floor. And it burns and burns and burns and somebody rubs his back and somebody cooes and he cries, just a little, because this _sucks._

This was why he didn't want his tonsils out in the first place. It was more trouble than it was worth. He should have stood his ground more - he _knew_ he should have stood his ground more.

He sniffs into a lilac-smelling t-shirt. He thinks it might be Bruce that scoops him into his lap and secures him there. Dick drives.

* * *

" _It's tough to raise families these days in the wilds of South Africa. Two lionness sisters are single mothers with two cubs each…"_

He blinks.

" _Spotted hyenas are searching for food. They will follow lions, especially groups…"_

" _I came into the clinic this morning -"_

" _\- I worry about arthritis -"_

" _\- and he was screaming his head off."_

" _American bison are…"_

"Jeez, Little Timmy looks like he catapulted down into a well." Jason snaps his fingers beneath Tim's nose. Waves a hand in front of his face. Stands in front of the T.V. and rotates his hips.

"Let him be," Dick says in a hushed tone.

Alfred had been waiting for them when they had come home. He looked disappointed. He'd given Tim's shoulder a consoling rub before he disappeared.

Jason's just come down the stairs. He doesn't look so concerned as much as he does confused.

Damian pokes his head around the corner. "He's sleeping with his eyes open."

Jason's lip curls. "Well, it's creepy as fuck." He moves as if to close them, but Dick swats away his hand.

"He's not sleeping. I wish he _was_ sleeping, but he's watching National Geographic -" Dick leans forwards and squints at Tim's face from over his shoulder - "I think."

"He looks pretty zonked out to me."

"Yeah - painkillers. Leslie gave him stronger ones."

Jason flicks Tim's forehead. "Hey, Babybird, knock, knock. Anyone home? You're drooling on Dickie's shirt."

"Don't drool," Tim tries to say, but his tongue feels heavy and an offending drop of saliva lands on Dick's chest. Dick makes a little noise but Jason laughs.

"Somebody get the kid a bib. That's disgusting. Why don't we let poor Dickie go, huh?"

Dick shifts beneath him, and a moment later his warmth is gone. Tim makes a mewling noise.

"Somebody's greedy when he's high, isn't he?"

Jason's bulk presses up against his side. It's not as comfortable as when he was on Dick's lap, and a few frustrated tears slide down his face. Dick was nice. Why -when did he leave?

He lets out a little huff.

"Alfred won't care if you're sick if you get all your spit on those pillows."

Tim blows a spit bubble and Jason makes an over exaggerated groan before sliding him onto his lap.

"Bruce shouldn't have given you your laptop back," he says. "Can't trust you on any kind of technology. I think he's in a brooding mood about it. I don't really get it - we're Bats. Murphy's Law is, like, a given."

Tim makes a humming noise not so much of assent so much as just a reaction to how Jason's voice reverberates in his chest.

"You don't understand a single word I'm saying, do you?"

" _His brother turns to his mother and invites her to play…"_

"Red Hood is the best. Don't blink if you agree. Ah, atta boy."

Someone else enters Tim's field of vision. Alfred, setting down a plate of food. And a pint of raspberry sorbet, which Tim thinks might be his favorite, but he's not really sure.

"Breakfast, Master Jason. Master Tim."

He looks really meaningfully at Jason for some reason, and Tim can feel Jason nod over his head as he salutes. "On it, General." He reaches past Tim and Tim swears he eats a muffin in a single bite. Tim doesn't know what happened. One moment, it was there, the next: gone.

Jason shifts beneath him with a grunt, says something about losing the feeling in his legs and then scarfs down an omelet. Honestly. It's just...mesmerizing. Tim stares at Jason's plate and _swears_ that the napkin moves. It's getting bigger. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes. Yes. It has to be.

"Timmy," Jason coaxes. " _Timmy._ Your turn."

Tim's eyes blow wide. There's a spoon in front of his face. Jason's hand is holding it up, but then where's the rest of Jason? He - where's Jason?

"Tim," Jason repeats.

Tim presses two fingers to Jason's forearm and slurs, "Where'sss...where's the rest of you?"

Jason snorts. "You're higher than a kite."

Tim's still staring at the floating arm. "I can't...sssee you."

"I'm behind you." The arm waves up and down, and the spoon with it. "Now eat your breakfast."

Tim reaches for the spoon. It jerks away. Tim chases it.

"Hey," Jason clucks. "No grabs. You'll drop it, and Alfred will have _both_ our heads. Just - open your mouth. Wider. Wider. Tim, open your mouth or so help me -"

He wedges the spoon into Tim's mouth. It tingles on his tongue but tastes the way gasoline smells.

"Good?"

Tim smacks his lips and watches a pack of wolves ruthlessly maul a young musk ox in the brutal winter of the Arctic. "Tastes like…"

He doesn't know how long it is until Jason prompts, "Tastes like what?"

"Shit," he replies after another while, it the syllable hisses through his teeth. It's unbelievably funny, because he can't really feel his tongue very much at all. Maybe there are Oriental hornets all up in his brain. Could they do that? Maybe when it was dark, they crawled inside his ears and made a home inside his head.

He thinks of hornets buzzing out his ears and laughs. Jason shushes him, but it only makes him laugh more.

"Oookaaay, then." Jason sets closes the sorbet. "You've exited the stratosphere."

Tim throws his head back against Jason's arm. It sends dim jarring pains down his neck, and Jason frowns and shrugs his head back straight. "I think I have bees in my ears."

"Yep," Jason says. "I think you do, too."

He doesn't sleep then, but he only feels half-awake, anyway. Damian comes in sometime and hands Jason - _hey, so that's where the sorbet went -_

"Did you know that your eyes are green?" Tim blurts.

Damian freezes and stares at him like he's not speaking English. He is speaking English, isn't he? Why would he not speak English? Wait, Damian knew some Farsi, maybe he was supposed to be speaking Farsi? But he didn't know Farsi! He's forgotten it! Now _no one_ would be able to understand him!

" _Excusez-moi,"_ he says. " _Ich bin verloren. Sto cercando un soldo. Gracias."_

"What," Damian starts, "are you doing?"

Tim sniffles, and then cries. Jason bounces him. Damian's face twists into an expression mildly pained and extremely confused.

" _You know English,"_ Tim says, and his tongue fumbles to form the syllables. "I'm _sssooooooooooo -"_

"High," Jason finishes.

" _-proud of you."_

Damian's eyes slide upwards to Jason's. "And this lasts how long?"

Jason shrugs. "Why, you want to take over?"

Damian's upper lip curls.

And Jason is plopping Tim down on the couch cushions and getting up. "Great, thanks."

Tim whines. Damian gives him a disdainful look and, still staring at him, tells Jason, "And what requires me here to stay?"

"Just make sure he doesn't do backflips off the coffee table in the two minutes it'll take to brush my teeth."

Tim pats the couch and clucks his tongue in an effort to coax Damian down beside him. Damian does not appear to notice the offer, so he clucks louder. His couch pats become quick staccato.

"I'm not staying," Damian growls. His face is a little pink. "I came here to deliver oxycodone, which is already below me."

"You're mean," Tim mumbles, and rubs the side of his face against the arm of the couch. "Mean, mean, mean. I'll tell Alfred. I'll tell Bruce. I'll tell - I'll -"

Damian leans against the far end of the couch. "Compose yourself, Drake."

"It's cold," Tim complains. He points his foot and brushes his toes against Damian's arm. Damian jerks out of the way, and Tim frowns.

"It's cold," he repeats.

"You're sitting on the other blankets."

Tim looks down and pulls at the end of one, surprised. The blanket does not appear from beneath him. He leans forward and pulls harder, and when the blanket doesn't come, gives up.

Afghan, 1. Tim, 0.

"It's hiding," Tim says. "I don't think they trust me, yet."

"I'll be avoiding you as much as possible."

"I'm back," Jason announces. He holds up something in his hand and waves it around. " _And_ I brought my phone, so we can have High Tim in our memories forever."

* * *

Tim presses his forehead into Bruce's neck. "And then, my second grade teacher wouldn't let me get the gecko out anymore. But it wasn't even my fault."

"Why don't we sleep, Tim?" Bruce asks hopefully. "Doesn't that sound better than talking?"

"The last time I tried falling asleep I remembered that goblins lived under the beds. I had a dream once where -"

"Quieter," Bruce pleads. "Quieter."

Tim lowers his voice. "Are we whispering?"

"Yes. We're whispering. But you should sleep. You were up all night last night, and most of the night before that."

"But I'm not tired," Tim whispers loudly. "And _Wicked Tuna_ is on."

"You're sick."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not. You gave my tonsils away so I don't get sick anymore. I remember."

Bruce sighs heavily enough to ruffle Tim's hair.

"Don't argue with him," Jason says. He shoves a pretzel into his mouth and pinches Tim's side. Tim kicks his feet out with a huff. "It's impossible to win when he's high."

"Even more impossible than when he's not?" Bruce asks.

"Even more. Hey, Tim, we've already seen this episode of Dr. Pol."

"I don't remember it."

"Well, I do." Jason gestures towards the remote. Bruce hands it to him, and then the T.V. switches off.

" _Hey,"_ Tim forces out. He stretches forward with a scowl and makes a clumsy grab for the remote. Jason dances away.

Tim makes as to go after him, but Bruce keeps a tight hold on him and forces his head back down against his chest.

" _Please,_ Tim. Sleep."

"No."

" _Sleep."_

And it's in the Batman voice, so the Robin still in Tim takes over and obeys.

* * *

In the following two days, they wean him off oxycodone, Tim gains sanity but loses the ability to tolerate life in general.

Would have thought he'd lost the use of his legs, too, by the way everyone zeroed in on him when his foot so much as twitched. He would get up to go to the bathroom and Bruce would ask him where he thought he was going, Dick would just _happen_ to be wandering around the hall, Jason would ask him how high he was, and Alfred seemed to be vacuuming the living room all the time. Sometimes Tim will check behind the shower curtain, just to be make sure Damian isn't lying in wait.

He wanders around the house when he's sick of Nat Geo Wild (yes - it is possible to get sick of Nat Geo Wild). He carries a spit cup with him, which disgusts him more than he thinks anybody else. Swallowing at the moment is an obstacle barely hurdled, and it's funny how much people don't realize they swallow their spit throughout the day (spoiler alert: more often than you think). He lets miniscule slivers of ice, popsicle, low calorie ice cream, and sorbet melt on his tongue. It's been his diet for the past week, which is fine and all, but he overheard Bruce calling Leslie earlier about his weight, and Bruce tried to get him to drink a protein shake. Tim refused. Dick came by and tried to get him to take two sips. Tim refused. Jason came by and tried shoving the straw between his lips. He considered biting Jason's fingers.

"Oh, woe is you," Dick said. "Your family cares about your health and well-being."

And...maybe Tim felt a _little_ guilty about that. But he's going stir crazy, here. He swears he's seen the same Dr. Pol episode seven times. The cat with a cold. Not to mention that he still feels like shit.

Everyone needs a little alone time - even around the family. Sometimes _especially_ around the family.

He's tried scoping for his laptop a few times, but was unsuccessful, and he hunted around his room for the few old phones in his drawer. They'd been taken, which was just a _complete_ invasion of privacy, and other ones he had hidden were in the most secreted place in Gotham - a.k.a the Cave, which was still off-limits.

Tim feels like the family has gone a bit overboard.

Damian, at least, acts mostly normal until Bruce or Dick give him an 'assignment'. Which means he doesn't antagonize Tim so much and goes for disdainful glares instead. He makes particularly loud complaints about Tim's spit cups, which Tim doesn't understand. Tim doesn't want to use the spit cups. They're disgusting. But he can't help himself.

He takes to finding the best hiding places around the mansion. This is obviously time-consuming because there are hundreds of suitable ones. But only a few best ones. So far, he has yet to find a spot to beat the servant's half-door on the fourth floor. It's concealed behind a desk. The passageway that might have been there has been blocked off, but there's just enough room for him to squeeze in (and hide things).

The best places to hide are the really obvious ones. Like under beds - classic hiding space. Just laying on the floor is - well - pretty obvious, but if the bed was high enough, it's possible to suspend himself over the floor by fitting himself between the slats.

Keeping low while on top of things is just part of Bat family nature. The library is great. Plenty of places to creep around, and Tim's still sure that there's a secret sliding bookcase somewhere - because, come on. Old mansion? Large library? A secret room was a given. He'd find the book that triggered it one day.

For now, he's attempting to avoid all forms of human contact. If Alfred brings a protein shake to him, Tim will have no escape.

So he has skedaddled from the living room and a documentary on Alaska. He's okay for now, and wants to stay that way. _Without fifteen grams of protein._

He's in the middle of reading some old classic he'd pulled on a whim (in the hopes it was the trigger book) when he hears footsteps and presses low on top of the bookshelf he's claimed (good spot. High and shadowed by the second level, behind the ladder staircase).

Damian enters. Rounds two rows of shelves before apparently finding what he's looking for - some book that is actually horrendously large and could probably be better at blocking bullets than a bullet-proof vest - and sitting primly in a velvet loveseat.

Good. Tim's apparently escaped detection.

He's another two pages in _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ when Alfred pokes his head in and inquires, "Master Damian."

Damian doesn't look up from his book. "Pennyworth."

"I was hoping you might have seen where Master Timothy has gotten to."

"Haven't seen him."

Alfred hums. "It was a try. Will you be wanting tea?"

"No, thank you."

Alfred leaves. Tim lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, and then nearly chokes on it when a few moments later Damian says, "You're safe, Drake."

Tim doesn't respond.

"You're reading _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ on top of the fiction bookcase behind the stairs."

Damian really creeps him the hell out, sometimes.

He hops down and flops in the chair opposite to Damian.

"The books were leaning five degrees to the right. If you want to hide, actually make it entertaining, Drake."

Uh. The last Tim had a brilliant hiding place, he lived in fear for the following two days that Damian would never stop giving him the Killing Glare. The vents have since then been compromised.

Damian flips a page. "The family has been more irritating than usual as of late. Father has continually been cutting patrols short. Grayson's approaching in eleven seconds."

Tim hops out of the chair and whips around a bookshelf.

Dick's eyes rove around the room when he stops in the doorway. "Hey, Dames. You haven't seen Tim recently, have you?"

"No."

"You're sure?"

Damian sighs loudly. "You think _Drake_ would escape my detection?"

"No, but - well, I -"

"I'm insulted, Grayson. Do you truly doubt my powers of observation this little?"

Dick rubs the back of his head and laughs. "No, I'm sorry. If you _do_ see him, will you send him my way?"

Damian doesn't say anything. Flips another page and doesn't look up. Dick taps his fingers on the doorway and says goodbye, and Tim waits another minute before slinking back into his chair.

"Are you turning me in or not?" he finally mutters after deeming Damian unreadable. Honestly. It's like studying a statue.

"Grayson didn't specify _when_ to send you his way."

"You're being nice."

Damian's nose scrunches. "I'm not being nice."

"Yeah. You are. Do you need something from me?"

Damian's head lifts, and he holds Tim in a steady glare. "I came here for peace, quiet, and Tolstoy. Interpret it as you will."

He looks back down. Tim studies him for a few more moments - seriously, the kid barely blinks - before keeping his mouth shut.

They manage a half-hour in delicate silence before Damian's fingers tense on the pages of his book a half-second before he jerks his head to the side. Tim drops his book and dives behind a bookshelf.

"Hey, brat," Jason starts.

"He's not here."

Jason huffs. "You didn't even know what I was going to ask you."

"I didn't have to."

"Isn't it always a pleasure," Jason mutters under his breath, and then comes into the library. Tim inwardly cringes where he spots his book abandoned on his chair. At least he'd closed it. "Maybe I was going to ask what you're reading."

"The presence of 'maybe' makes the purpose of such a statement invalid."

"Fine." Tim flinches when Jason spots his empty chair and picks up his book before settling himself into it, hiking his boots on the table. He shoves the book under Damian's nose.

"You tag-teaming on classic novels, or something?"

Damian pushes Jason's boots off with a foot.

" _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ is fantastic. Very French, for an author named Emma Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josefa Barbara Orczy. And very…" Jason twirls his finger in the air. "Very Gothamite, I might say. About a dashing young vigilante with an affinity for drama and the color red."

"Does he go around with AK-47s shooting drug dealers out of alleys?"

"Perhaps if it wasn't 1792. And you're _not_ reading this."

Damian pushes the book back towards Jason. "No. As you can clearly see - at least, if your occipital nerves function the way they should - I am currently occupied with Tolstoy's _War and Peace."_

Jason waves _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ up and down. "So, I should leave you alone, then."

"An astounding conclusion."

"Was Little Timmy in here, yes or no? Lassie's looking for him before he falls down another damn well."

"I'm sure Drake is fine."

"Alright." Jason gets up. "I'll just...sit here, then. And _spoiler alert, Sir Percy is -"_

Tim plugs his ears, even though he already knows the rest. Kind of hard to read mystery novels and _not_ figure out what's going on. It's annoying. He always expected more from _Sherlock Holmes._ But _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ was a mystery novel with French ladies in it and a flair for dramatics, so it was _juicy, and -_

" _At the end of the book, Sir Percy dies!"_

 _What?_ No! No, no, no! Sir Percy is dumb and lazy, but he's funny in a _not_ funny way, and he doesn't deserve to die!

" _Chauvelin -"_

"Do you mind, Todd?" Damian spits.

"Not at all, thanks. _Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim T -"_

Damian decides that he's had enough. Instead of feeling betrayed, Tim feels a little touched he's lasted this long.

"He's back behind the second bookcase."

Jason whistles. "Atta boy. _Here, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy!"_

Before Jason's ugly Starry Night socks can come into view, Tim climbs up the shelf and flattens himself at the top.

Jason throws his head back and groans. "Get down."

"Make me."

Jason reaches for his foot. He kicks out once and feels a moment of satisfaction when Jason stumbles back. He receives a rude gesture for it, and a "Fine. Stay up there all day", but - key word - he _stays._

Or so he thinks. He doesn't come down for a while for fear of someone staking out nearby, so when he _does_ hop down, he thinks he's safe.

Who is he kidding? It's a mansion occupied by vigilantes, a badass butler, and a cow. No one is safe.

"Babysitting duty, huh?" he mumbles to Bruce.

Bruce's face is impassive. He holds a protein shake bottle in his hand. "Babysitting duty."

Tim eyes his hand warily and crosses his arms. "Don't you think this is getting maybe a _little_ out of hand?"

"No."

Wow. What an argument.

* * *

 **One more chapter left!**


	5. Can't Stay Down

**This took a while because 1. I wasn't satisfied with it for some time (and I'm still like, 'eh') and 2. because it is actually kind of longer. For me.**

 **Here. Have a Halloween treat (no tricks. Maybe).**

* * *

One mild fight later, the living room is now Drake Dungeon. Tim's not allowed to leave until he drinks the fucking protein shake, which is completely unfair. Apparently minuscule licks of ice cream and popsicle aren't sufficient nutrition, and the "family is worried about his health".

Whatever.

Jason sighs and mutes America's National Parks: Yosemite. "I say we pinch his nose and pour it down his throat."

"No."

"Let's make a bargain - we can make a compromise, can't we, Tim? Compromise?" Dick says hopefully.

Tim can't keep his laptop, his dignity or his tonsils, then there sure as hell is one thing he can keep:

 _Fucking raw willpower._

He closes his eyes and feigns sleeping - except, it is _extremely_ difficult to fake sleeping when you're in a room full of trained detectives. So he just has Jason incessantly tap him.

 _Not today, Todd,_ says the voice inside his head. It sounds eerily like Damian. _Not today._

"Tim, it isn't cute," Bruce snaps. "You're being -

Bruce's watch beeps, and not a second later - Tim _swears_ not a second later - the living room clears out.

And he's saved by the bell. Bat signal.

Same thing.

He takes the abandoned protein shake, goes to the kitchen, and pours it down the sink before shoving it as deep as he can into the trash.

He closes the trash fast and whirls at footsteps.

"Master Tim," Alfred greets.

Tim smiles.

"Care to help with dinner?"

He bows with flourish and says, "I am here to serve."

"Good. The refrigerator, please."

Tim opens it obediently.

"On the top shelf, you'll see a row of protein shakes."

Tim's smile drops. He turns to Alfred and mimes getting stabbed in the heart.

Alfred smiles, but one of his eyebrows arch. It's a dare to defy.

Tim has an IQ of 142. He doesn't pursue the dare. But perhaps he can...skirt it.

"Bargain?" he suggests and opens the fridge to wave an ice cream up and down. "Please?"

Alfred pats his cheek. "No."

Tim allows a momentary scowl and lets the fridge door close loudly when he replaces the ice cream. When he faces the counter again, there is already a straw poked through the box. Waiting for him.

"Thanks," he mutters, and slides forwards over the counter, sliding the box between his hands.

"My pleasure, Master Tim."

Tim helps minimally with dinner, partly because he's maybe possibly incompetent in the kitchen, partly because Alfred nags him about faking drinking through the straw.

"But half," he whines, slumped on the counter and trying to be as pathetic as possible.

"An admirable feat, too. However -" an Alfred taps a recently crushed pill into the remaining half - "I'm not yet satisfied."

Tim pulls his hood over his face and lays his head on the cool marble.

"Master Tim," Alfred presses.

"My throat hurts," he moans.

"Not as bad as you want me to think. Head up."

Tim complies, but sets his chin in his hand. The kitchen smells like rosemary, and his nose twitches. He looks mournfully at the chicken.

Dare he say it? He wants real, actual food.

However, ever since the Oriental hornet debacle, everything just tastes like tar on a highway in the height of summer. No, he feels better than he has over the past week, but the protein shake _literally_ tastes like liquid car exhaust.

He resumes passing the box back and forth in his hands. "You think they're coming back soon?"

Alfred looks out the window, where the last strips of cerulean have faded into the horizon, leaving a smoggy sky behind. "Let's hope so. I'll be greatly disappointed if they don't come and enjoy the meal we made them."

Alright, so maybe Tim didn't _really_ help that much - just got stuff out and put them back, and cleaned up afterwards - but maybe he allows himself to preen a little. The potatoes might be overly salted, but that wasn't a mistake; it was a signature Tim Drake handiwork.

"What was the alert about?" he tries casually.

"I don't know."

He nods, and then adds, "You don't know, or you aren't supposed to tell me?"

"I don't know," Alfred repeats.

Tim inhales and twirls the straw around with his finger. "This sucks. Three weeks is a long time."

"I remind you that it would have only been two, if you had only taken better care of your person."

Tim rolls on his side and groans. "I'm wallowing, Alfie. Let me wallow. I'm a wild animal stuck in a sticky tar pit of pity."

"Eloquent. Shall we go into the living room and see what documentary is showing?"

Tim slides off his stool. Alfred clucks and tilts his head pointedly towards the protein shake.

Tim shakes it. "It's near empty."

"You won't win this war of attrition, Master Timothy."

"Ooh, DEFCON 'Timothy'. You mean business."

He finishes the carton to Alfred's satisfaction and tosses it, and they go into the living room. Tim shoves Titus aside - that's _his_ blanket nest, _peasant -_ and he's laying on _Steve the Stegosaurus_ \- and settles in for _National Parks._

And then the world goes dark.

The T.V. fizzes out, and the darkness leaps in on them from all sides. Tim lets out a curse under his breath before hopping to his feet.

Alfred makes a displeased noise in his throat. "Oh, dear."

They wait a bated few minutes in tense silence, the both of them listening for the imaginary hum of a generator that never comes.

"I'll light some candles," Alfred says. "I think we have some tea lights in the kitchen drawer. And there's some flashlights somewhere -"

"I'll go check the generators. Be careful."

"Master -"

But Tim's already weaving his way out of the living room. Instinct tells him that if this was a horror movie, he'd die first as the stupid white dude who goes and checks things out alone.

It's pitch black, so Tim brushes against the walls and only near falls down the stairs once.

Alright. So maybe he lives in a Mansion full of detectives and one very nifty butler. But it's survival of the fittest, here. Only those most adaptive to change survive.

So...maybe Tim's been entertaining his family more than they think.

(Because, he means, _come on._ Did his family _really_ believe that he was just hiding from David Attenborough?)

So maybe sometimes when he was hiding, he was actually working on cases on his backup laptop.

Yeah. Dick _thought_ he'd hidden it. But he'd only taken Number Two, which had been deemed a better decoy than work laptop, and Bruce had taken his "main" laptop, which had been taken so many times that Tim carried it around for show.

They are _rich_. Electronics are the first thing to go when Tim is grounded. Hiding backups around the house was common sense.

He may not have found the secret room in the library yet, but he _had_ found that old servant's passage, and hiding behind some rotting wood slats with a few comms and supported by a stash of power cells and seventies CD's he'd stolen from Dick to stop his reign of terror is laptop Number Three:

Beautiful. Sleek. Glossy. With fingerprints all over the touch screen and a few coffee drops that had dried into tan spots on the left corner of his keyboard.

"Master Tim?" he hears Alfred call. He makes a dashing detour into a studio room and settles himself on the windowsill, drawing his knees up and tilting his laptop against his thighs. He minimizes his tab of a hit-and-run and pulls up the running file named Electric Bees (it's under his 'Unsolved' folder and beneath 'Eccentric'. Organization is key).

He tries pulling up a few cameras, but most of his best ones are dead, dead, dead. He goes into his personal cameras, which are all...not the best quality, he admits. Cam recorders he replaces too often for as useful as they are. Grainy picture. And most of them, in the process of being hidden from close inspection, are reduced into only pockets of vision.

But they serve Tim well tonight. He thanks whatever genius made batteries a thing and fits the comm into his ear.

Jason's voice assaults his ears." _Oh, dear god. Oh dear god. There's so_ many _of them. Why are there so many of them?"_

" _I'm going to need you to calm down,"_ Oracle says.

" _They're messing with my helmet! I repeat, they are_ messing _with my helmet!"_

Tim squints and then near rips the comm out of his ear as Jason's voice is lost in a sudden tidal wave of Lana Del Rey's "Summertime Sadness". It cuts in and out before fading.

Jason lets out a distressed snap. " _They. Are. Messing. With. My._ Helmet!"

Dick's laughing. "You listen to Lana Del Rey!"

" _Shut the fuck up, Nightwing!"_

" _You have an mp3 programmed into your helmet. I'm just - "_ Nightwing sniffs - " _so proud."_

" _I wouldn't be quipping right now, Nightwing. You're about to be overtaken by a swarm."_

" _Got it. I'll duck under - oh. Oh, nope. There they are. Uh huh. Yep. I'm just gonna -_ shit."

" _That's a display of public indecency,"_ Robin says.

Red Hood scoffs. " _Well, I don't know about any of you, but I've already peed in my pants."_

" _TMI,"_ Oracle snaps.

" _You can't tell me no one's ever had an unfortunate accident in the uniform before. Out all night, in Gotham, dealing with crazy shit - the bladder can only take so much."_

" _Quiet, Hood."_

" _Hey, you be quiet! Don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all, you little demon."_

" _Quiet, Red Hood,"_ Batman says.

" _It's like you two are related or something."_

There is a dead period where all Tim can hear is a low drone. He nods to himself, glimpsing back at his available screens, before turning on his mic.

"This is your captain speaking."

" _You mother - shit - ow - fuck - damn - sugar - h-e-double hockey sticks -"_

" _Red Robin,"_ Batman acknowledges.

"We're about to hit some turbulence, please take precautions."

" _Red Robin,"_ Oracle sighs.

"Somebody call an exterminator; there's a hornets' nest at the corner of First and Main."

" _No - nder,"_ Red Hood snaps, comm going in and out. " _Red Robin."_

"Yes. That is the name of your savior." He hears Alfred call his name, so gets up and trots down the stairs. "Can you still hear me?"

"Master Tim?" Alfred says. A flashlight swings his way, and Alfred's eyes narrow at Tim's bounty. "Master Tim, I'm highly -"

Tim waves his hand. "I'll be quick. I promise."

Robin sniffs. " _Highly unlikely."_

"No," Tim promises. Alfred looks torn between taking the laptop from him or going for a good English scold. Tim finishes fast. "I won't be more than twenty minutes," he says into the mic. "By the time you get back, I'll be dead asleep on the couch."

" _Eat a Jello cup."_

"Batman, I have to tell you: I literally _hate_ Jello. With a burning passion."

Nightwing gasps. " _It's impossible to hate Jello."_

" _No, there are some nasty Jello flavors out there,"_ Oracle cuts in. " _Look at the failures of mixed vegetable. Italian salad. Plain. But it is physically impossible to hate_ strawberry _Jello."_

Robin makes a humming noise." _I found the lime serviceable. Once I got over the texture, of course."_

" _Can we discuss this later?"_ Red Hood asks, except his voice comes out a little like Darth Vader's. " _Gotham's being attacked by swarms of robotic Asian electric wasps."_

" _Don't remind me,"_ Nightwing moans.

There is the sound of shuffling on Oracle's end." _I thought we got them all."_

" _We did,"_ Batman says at the same time Robin exclaims, " _The curb is not part of the road. The curb is not part of the road!"_

"As much as I love Vespa Geocache -" Tim takes a millisecond to rename his case folder - "It is a _minor_ inconvenience."

" _Minor,"_ Red Hood repeats. " _He says 'minor'. I'm sorry, are swarms of then chasing you?"_

" _Eighteen minutes,"_ Robin says, and it reminds Tim of the running clock.

"Right. Right - I'm tracing multiple signals throughout Gotham - I'm dubbing them 'nests' -"

" _As you do,"_ Nightwing adds.

"No time for quips."

" _That's physically impossible for me."_

"And I frankly don't care. Multiple nests, and I have approximately eighteen minutes-"

"Seventeen minutes and twenty six seconds," Alfred corrects.

" _I want your video feed,"_ Oracle demands. "Mine are limited."

"I'll send you the coordinates. Look - when I say 'multiple nests', I mean that there's, like, twelve hotspots. I assume each corresponding with its own swarm. What's particularly interesting is that - I know they're robots - but Oriental hornets are actually solar-powered. They generate electricity -"

Red Hood curses just before Tim hears scuffling." _So we're getting chased by giant solar cells. Got it, thanks."_

"Giant solar cells that mess with preexisting electricity - not that energy can be generated - that's a conservation law - but Oriental hornets by nature are not nocturnal."

" _So whoever's making them maybe just has an affinity for hornets. Symbolism, and all that,"_ Oracle suggests.

Nightwing makes a low noise in his throat at the same time Batman says, " _Hive."_

"If this was Hive, we would know. This is someone different - someone with a lot of time on their hands, or a group who has some sort of hornet assembly line. Theory: someone needs a heck of a lot of electricity."

" _This is why you're the detective,"_ Red Hood remarks with more snark than Tim needs. " _I'm really seeing the IQ of 142, now."_

It takes his raw willpower again to refrain from engaging in a sarcasm match."We have the inactive boxes. Given permission, I can go and check them out."

" _You're not in the Batcave?"_ Batman asks. He sounds surprised, and Tim feels smug.

"No. I'm sitting on the couch while Agent A taps his watch."

"Eleven minutes, eighteen seconds."

" _Eleven minutes, eighteen seconds -_ That's an _analog watch,_ you can't tell -"

"Eleven minutes, ten seconds."

" _You don't need the Batcave,"_ Robin says. " _You already have the data on the hornets."_

"Preliminary data. Of what I could gather from overhearing the last ordeal with them."

" _No,"_ Robin protests. " _You retrieved inactive specimen number seven, took it apart, and then put it back together and replaced it back with the others."_

"Robin, do you know what a 'tattletale' is?" Tim steals a glance up at Alfred. Alfred's eyes narrow in suspicion. Tim tries for an innocent smile, but it must look pretty condemning, especially when Batman is low enough to cause an eardrum collapse.

" _You disobeyed me."_

"No - no - no. I haven't set foot in the Batcave -"

All of a sudden, Nightwing makes a terrible, sucking sound. Tim's heart jumps.

" _They must all die,"_ Nightwing gasps.

" _What?"_ Oracle repeats, over and over. " _What? What happened?"_

" _The diner on Sixth left us out grilled cheese. And these damn wasps made me step on them."_

"Red Robin," Batman growls.

"Red Robin," Nightwing mimics, and then makes a coughing sound. " _Oh, shit, I think I swallowed a bug. And there's cheese on my foot. I repeat, there is cheese on my foot."_

Red Hood snorts. Sings," _Nightwing has the cheese touch."_

" _Grow up,"_ Nightwing whines.

" _When you do."_

"I didn't set foot in the Batcave," Tim promises. Alfred is giving him the stink eye. "In fact, I haven't even been anywhere near it."

" _A slippery truth,"_ Robin admits, and then snaps, "This is a one-way lane, Father! _And Red Robin reprogrammed the specimen to obey_ his _signal."_

" _Red Robin," Batman presses._

"But I didn't set foot in the Batcave. I just...used my resources. To do some casual research."

" _Casual,"_ Oracle repeats.

"I honed in on the subject Nightwing activated. These things like electricity - so I made it a five star dinner."

" _Where the hell did you make that much of a signal without anybody noticing?"_

"I used the toaster," Tim admits sheepishly.

" _Master Tim,"_ Alfred hisses, horrified.

"And hooked it up to some...stuff."

" _Where,"_ Batman demands.

"...around. The Mansion. Distributed in different places."

" _Does this have anything to do with that potato you stole when you were high?"_ Red Hood asks.

" _Oh, gosh diddly,"_ Nightwing moans. " _Even High Tim is scheming and conniving."_

"And you'll thank me for it. Look, there's between six thousand and twelve thousand robotic hornets swarming Gotham. Tell me off later, preferably when Al - Agent A isn't shining a flashlight in my eyes."

Alfred adjusts the flashlight."You hear better in the darkness. Maybe this time, with one less sense, you might make listening out of hearing. Despite contrary belief, sometimes people say meaningful things, Master Tim, and I would prefer you not to dismiss them. Seven minutes, thirty-six seconds."

"These things want electricity," Tim declares fast. "Lots of it - they don't seem to mind most of my cameras, but Hood's apparently got bees in his helmet. If they want electricity - fine. Give it to them. They'll fry."

" _And drop like flies,"_ Hood grumbles. " _Great, thanks, where do we get an electron Big Mac?"_

"We're going to need a charge. I bet if we through some static electricity their way, we'd shut them down."

" _Brilliant,"_ Robin remarks snidely. " _Honestly, what would we ever do without you?"_

" _Robin,"_ Batman chides.

" _No, no,"_ Red Hood interjects, " _Shortstack has a point -"_

" _Shortstack!"_ Robin hisses.

" _\- what are we gonna do, rub some balloons against our heads?"_

" _Not the hair,"_ Nightwing moans. And then, " _Holy cheese balls, these hornets are really fuzzing annoying."_

" _Air has a fair amount of positive charge,"_ Oracle offers, " _But I don't know how you want to become Zeus. Saran-wrap the place?"_

" _Can't we just call an exterminator?"_ Nightwing groans. " _Let's call an exterminator."_

" _We're the exterminators, dumbass,"_ Red Hood snaps. " _What about a remote? There's a remote, right? Villains always have remotes, with giant red buttons on them. We don't have to mess with physics. We can just crush the damn thing."_

"And risk them not shutting down," Tim warns. "I want you all to do something for me."

" _What?"_

" _Be a balloon,"_ Oracle replies. " _And rub against a street lamp."_

" _Are you...proposing pole dancing?"_ Nightwing asks carefully.

Tim leans his head in his hand. "No, Nightwing."

"Yes, Nightwing," Red Hood mimics. Static crackles in Tim's ear, and then: " _Oh, well shit. Is polyester good for static electricity?"_

"Yes," Tim says at the same time Oracle does.

" _Well, good news and bad news, nerds. Your nerdiness works! But it doesn't prevail."_

"What do you mean?"

" _I got, like, two of the damn things to twitch on the floor."_

"Fuck," Tim says. Nightwing makes an 'eep' noise in response. "Then - wait - Robin, do you have any dampeners -"

" _They're inactive."_

"Then - Maybe - Shit - Um -"

"Two minutes, Master Timothy," Alfred announces softly.

"Hold on. Hold on. Let me think. These are annoying - I've got this - one sec…"

" _I have a phone charging cell?"_ Nightwing suggests, voice lilting in question. " _We could...I don't know...charge something?"_

Red Hood scoffs." _Let's just pour water all over them. Anybody got a giant bucket lying around? Oh! Let's tip the water tower!"_

"Thirty seconds."

" _Take this seriously,"_ Robin snaps.

" _Because the demon bird is scared of the dark?"_

Batman growls. Red Hood and Robin shut up, though Tim can practically _hear_ Robin fuming on the other end.

"Fifteen."

He has to think. He's got this down. This is amateur work, after all - annoying, but amateur -

"Ten."

Tim just -

"Nine."

What would he -

"Eight."

Stupid stress response -

"Seven."

Making him think like a bunch of exposed wires -

"Six."

He's shorting out -

"Five."

Maybe if he -

"Four."

Could just use -

"Three."

Yes! That was it - god, was he an _idiot._ Why was he so _slow?_

"Two."

"The _toaster!"_ he gasps.

" _Twenty minutes is up,"_ Batman says just as Alfred tugs on Tim's ear.

" _A toaster?"_ Red Hood repeats incredulously. " _Are you high again?"_

" _No, he's brilliant,"_ Oracle says.

Robin sniffs and mutters," _I beg to differ."_

" _Red Robin,"_ Batman warns.

"Goodnight," he says fast, and then surrenders his mic over to Alfred, who closes his laptop with a final _click._

He can't help but be immensely disappointed himself. How stupid can he be? Maybe painkillers mess with his brain more than he thinks. Or maybe his brain has just gone to strawberry Jello.

But -

He rubs his face with his hands. "Alfred - Can I just -"

"I'm sure they'll manage just fine, Master Tim. And I worry for the state of one of my toasters."

"I can put it back together - good as new! Better than new!"

Alfred puts a hand on his shoulder. "If they need help, I'm sure they'll call. But tonight is your night off."

Alfred lowers a Jello cup into his lap.

Tim looks pleadingly into his eyes. "I never promised Bruce that."

"But perhaps it will please him enough to not ground you for another week."

"He can't ground me. I'm an emancipated minor."

Alfred hands him a spoon. Tim sticks it in the Jello after waving it around. "What are you going to do with my laptop?"

"That's up to Master Bruce."

Tim hums around the spoon, and then stabs it into the Jello. "I know all his hiding places. I'll find it again."

"Then _I_ will hide it until Master Bruce gives you his permission for it back."

"I've got more. I am unstoppable."

"You are a mere mortal," Alfred says. "I have spent Master Bruce's entire lifetime and more on this estate. I should hope I know where you hide your things."

Tim licks another blob of Jello off his spoon, and asks hesitantly, "Do...you?"

Alfred smiles, and it's scary.

"Hey, Alfred," Tim says when he gets to the point where he's just stirring the Jello around in its cup, and Alfred stares at it hard enough that Tim half believes lasers are going to shoot from his eyes. "Now, you gotta tell me. Where exactly _is_ the secret passage in the library?"

"I don't believe that there is one, Master Tim."

"Oh, sure. That's what you want me to think."

Alfred finally takes the Jello cup from him and sets it aside. "Get some sleep, Master Tim." He takes a seat in an adjacent armchair and picks up a _Good Housekeeping_ magazine (Dick's Christmas gift) from the tray on the ottoman, reading it by candlelight.

At least, he _seems_ like he's reading. But Timothy Jackson Drake has lived in this house long enough to know when Alfred's eyes are watching him.

So Tim throws an afghan over his shoulder, wriggles around until his pillow fortress is _just_ right, and closes his eyes.

But he doesn't sleep.

He's hoping Alfred will, so maybe he can snatch his laptop back and jump back in the fray. No one could stay too mad at him if he did, especially if his solution worked.

 _Reprogram one of the hornets,_ he wills. _Reprogram a stunned one. Reprogram multiple stunned ones. Make them follow a new electrical signal, come on, reprogram them, the way I did mine using the toaster, come on..._

Eventually, the feel of Alfred's eyes boring holes into him fades (thanks, sensory adaptation), but he still doesn't dare move. A few shifts, here and there - to make the sleeping act believable - but he waits and he waits and he waits.

It is extremely difficult to be relaxed when he's waiting.

It is extremely difficult to keep relaxed when all of a sudden a low drone starts up before the T.V. starts blaring about owls, one of the world's most perfect predators. He almost doesn't withhold his sigh of relief, though he allows his hand a twitch of victory, because _somebody_ figured it out.

" _He doesn't like Jello,"_ he hears Bruce whisper suddenly. He sounds serious and a little incredulous.

"No," Alfred replies lowly. "And he _didn't_ promise you a cup, so I allowed him his half."

A short exhale. "Which I suppose is better than nothing."

"As I thought. Goodnight, Master Bruce."

"Goodnight, Alfred."

Tim forces himself not to stiffen as he senses Bruce's approach. He expects Bruce to leave, but Bruce just... _stands there._ And watches Tim "sleep".

Which, he means, cute - but creepy. Honestly, Bruce. Get your social skills together.

So Tim waits there ( _for an agonizingly long time. He suspects Bruce is waiting for him to admit he's not actually sleeping. This is a war of attrition? Fine. Tim is a battle-hardened warrior)_ and thinks he might maybe go insane.

But finally, Bruce brushes his hair back and says, "Tim."

His bangs being moved back makes his forehead tickle, so it takes a _whole_ lot of willpower to keep his nose from twitching.

"Tim," Bruce repeats, a little louder. Tim gives in and lets his nose scrunch before squinting up. He's going for 'bleary but alert'. "Bruce?"

"Hey, chum."

"Did you get the 'lectricity back on?"

"Like you don't already know."

Tim hums and plays his Cute & Tired card. "I don't. I went to bed, like a good boy."

Bruce snorts. "I think Titus is getting restless. He wants his spot back. When will your iron reign of the couch end?"

"This couch is mine. The dog can sit on me for all I care."

"The dog weighs more than you. He'd crush your spine."

Tim pushes a pillow in Bruce's face.

"Thank you for eating half a Jello cup and then leaving it for Alfred," Bruce says. "He really appreciated that."

"Don't try to be sarcastic, Bruce. That's Robin's move, not Batman's."

"Admit that if there was a coffee-flavored Jello, you would eat it. Then I might consider listening to you."

"There _was_ a coffee-flavored Jello. And guess what? No one liked it. Because Jello is bad."

Bruce makes a _hrmm_ noise. Tim identifies it as the _hrmm_ of light amusement. Number Eleven. Truly a rare _hrmm._ "I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation." He lifts Tim's feet, sits, and squeezes Tim's knee. It's such a Dick thing to do that Tim just _barely_ refrains from kicking Bruce in the solar plexus.

"Oohooo. A hypothetical situation? How long have I been asleep - is it already Christmas?"

The last time Bruce had given him a hypothetical situation, Tim was still Robin and Bruce hadn't ever been on a soul-searching journey through time while being "dead".

So. You know.

Nostalgia, and some other crap.

Bruce pinches his knee again. Tim gives in to sweet, sweet reflex and shoves his foot into Bruce's solar plexus. Only problem is that Bruce is much more of a _cement wall_ than Dick is, so Tim isn't rewarded by a succeeding 'oof'. Which is disappointing.

Bruce leans back. He's smiling, just a little. Smile Number 3. The 'Pleased Asshole'. Probably learned from Dick and mastered under Jason, and passed down through Bat mojo genes to Damian. "If I don't make you eat any more Jello, ever, for the rest of your life, then…?"

Tim lays out smile Number 5.2, one of his favorites: the 'I Can Play This Game Grin'. "Then I would immediately call you the best psychological mess ever, to tell the truth and to butter you up before I berate you for ever making me eat toxic slime in the first place, even when I told you that if you poured Jello on my headstone I would rise from the grave and exercise my abilities at revenge."

"And if I would be satisfied by a protein shake right now?"

Tim makes a show of thinking about it and finally says, "Then I would take it from you, just to please you and make you feel comfortable. If it's not already opened, I'll open it, of course, and then while you're feeling satisfied, I'd pour it down the front of your shirt."

"And the consequences of that would be…?"

"Victory."

Bruce's eyebrows raise. "And?"

"And Alfred's wrath. But the situation would be a lose-lose situation, so I would be willing to give my life for the best lose."

"Like you would ever conform to only two choices."

"Two choices? There's only ever one choice, Bruce: _anarchy._ "

"Anarchy," Bruce repeats, half in disbelief and half in awe, as he sends a small Gatorade and a hydrocodone down towards Tim's end of the coffee table. Tim accepts them both, because he is a Good Child.

Bruce gets up and rubs Tim's shoulder in just the right spot so that Tim hisses and traps Bruce's fingers in the crook of his neck. Bruce huffs in a way that could _almost_ be considered a laugh.

"Goodnight, Tim."

"I think you mean good morning."

Bruce rolls his eyes and starts away. And Tim is _just_ getting comfortable - thinking that he passed without Bruce having to use his Disappointed Bat Glare - when Bruce turns at the foot of the stairs, where Tim can barely see him.

"And Tim?"

"Yeah?" Tim responds, eyes already sliding to the start of a rerun of a Brain Games episode.

"You're slipping on your acting skills. Get some real sleep."

Tim hates it when he realizes that all his best weapons come from Bruce.

He gets _chills_. He expects some sort of talk: an argument, a heart-to-heart - _whatever -_ but Bruce only continues up the stairs, steps creaking.

* * *

Two hours later, Tim's still dead awake, trying to figure out what this new situation means, and Jason's 'waking' him up next, and in a half-awake, completely serious voice threatens Tim that if he doesn't take this pill right this second, Jason will personally shove it down his trachea.

"And get some fucking sleep," he slurs, pulling a cowlick on Tim's forehead straight and tugging it twice. "I can practically _hear_ you thinking."

"Echoes off the walls," someone adds, and Damian materializes and disappears. Tim hears the refrigerator door open, and then a few biting complaints about Dick's 'godawful two percent milk', which is actually a quote from Bruce.

"You're up early," Tim says to Jason, as some kind of weak defense.

"I've got to get to the Cocoa Puffs before Dick."

"I've hidden them," Damian says, poking his head around the corner with an almost perfect imitation of Bruce Smile Number 3, except 'Pleased Asshole' is more 'Smug Asshole'.

One moment, Jason is sitting on the coffee table with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, the next - he's gone, leaving an enraged cry in his place. Tim hears a _thump_ \- something (or someone) being thrown, which is immediately followed by the sound of something skittering onto the floor. Jason lets out a half scream, half wail, and Damian curses a storm, and Tim wonders how anybody can sleep in this house, when the noise is all-powerful and eternal.

* * *

But Tim is a man of many talents.

Because he manages a light doze for approximately two hours, three minutes, and forty-seven seconds. He knows it's two hours, three minutes, and forty-seven seconds because someone has left their phone and stuck its timer in his face. He reaches out for it, but a hand comes down from above and snatches it up.

"I wonder how many phones are _really_ lost in this house," Bruce says.

Tim shoves himself up and combs a hand through his hair. It's greasy, and he needs a shower. _Let's get this conversation over fast._

"How are you?" Bruce continues. His hand goes for Tim's forehead, but Tim slaps it away.

"I'm fine."

Bruce's eyes narrow. Tim sighs, crosses his arms to properly show his annoyance, and waits patiently (irritatedly) for Bruce to confirm for himself that Tim is, indeed, fine. Like he _said._

Bruce takes his face in his hands, ever so gently, as if Tim will shatter. "And your throat?"

"Fine."

Bruce stares at him longer. Tim holds eye contact for as long as he can, but then his eyes start to burn and he has to blink. He doesn't know how Bruce does it.

"It was better yesterday," he admits.

Bruce lets out a long-suffering sigh. " _Tim."_

"Sometimes the pain relapses," Tim adds quickly. "It's normal. I looked it up."

Bruce looks skeptical.

"It was probably the Jello?" Tim tries.

"You can't blame everything on the Jello," Bruce says. Tim can see him try to smile, but if there was a class for smiling, Bruce would be failing the remedial class. He takes his hands away from Tim's face and rubs the side of his jaw. "I just don't understand, Tim. Why can't you just - stay down when you're told to?"

"It's not that I don't want to," Tim explains. "It's that I _can't._ It's like going against gravity: you can't stay down in Gotham. It's impossible."

" _WHO ATE THE COCOA PUFFS?"_ Dick wails from the kitchen.

" _Master Dick!"_ Alfred snaps lowly. "Master Tim is _sleeping."_

"But I have been _attacked,_ Alfie. _Targeted,"_ Dick whines loudly, because it is not within his physical capabilities to whisper.

"Todd ate them," Damian supplies.

"No, I _didn't_ \- your little demon here spilled them -"

Something crashes.

" _Richard John Grayson,"_ Alfred hisses. " _Get up and clean this mess this instant."_

"Yeah, Richard," Jason mocks. "Clean it up."

Alfred makes a dangerous " _oooohhh-h-h-h,"_ sound. "You too, Jason Peter."

" _What?_ Alfie, my man, _Dick_ attacked _me."_

"And you engaged him. Master Damian - fetch the broom, please, and join them."

"I did nothing."

"Lies," Alfred replies immediately. "You caused it."

" _Pennyworth,"_ Damian starts, but is cut off with a just as biting, " _Master Damian."_

"You better get in there before someone loses an eye," Tim suggests, raising an eyebrow at Bruce.

Bruce mutters something that sounds eerily like "Puck me", but it's too low for Tim to tell for sure. He gets up and ruffles Tim's hair with another sigh. "Want anything?"

"I'm gonna take a shower. But when I'm back - a Gatorade. And do we..." Tim bites the inside of his cheek. "Do we have any Percocet left?"

" _Master Damian, you get down from the refrigerator right now!"_

"Perc-o-cet?" Bruce parrots, as if the syllables don't compute. Tim immediately regrets asking. "Percocet?"

"Bruce," he says, pleading.

"You said you were fine. You told me you were fine."

"I _am_ fine. So totally fine that I have ascended past this mortal plane and actually desire to get knocked out."

" _Jason Peter Todd, you're asking for soap in your mouth. Don't test me. Richard! That goes for you, too!"_

Bruce looks at Tim as if he has spontaneously and successfully done the haka in the living room. "You...want to...sleep."

"I know. I was surprised, too."

Bruce shakes his head. "Are you _sure_ there's nothing wrong with you?"

"I promise."

"Tim -"

"Bruce."

" _My brooms will_ not _be used as swords!"_

Tim takes a shower, downs a Percocet with a mouthful of Gatorade, and then is dead to the world for the following fourteen hours (With a one minute break between Hour Six and Seven, when someone - he doesn't remember - wakes him up and he robotically accepts an antibiotic crushed on a spoonful of raspberry sorbet). He misses Jason putting red hair dye in Dick's shampoo as revenge for the Kitchen War. He misses Damian hiding in the vents (his spot!) and staking out to shoot Jason with one of Dick's Nerf pistols. He misses Dick flaunting around red hair.

He misses Damian drawing a mustache and eyebrows on his face (at Jason's behest) (and Dick protests and adds a monocle later). He misses Alfred telling them all off. He misses Bruce completely chewing and spitting on his personal beliefs by taping a piece of paper to him that says, 'My name is Tim and I love Jello' in bright green marker. He misses slobbering all over his stuffed stegosaurus, Alfred taking it to be washed, Jason snatching it and chasing Damian around the house with it.

He misses Dick going for a roundhouse to Damian's head, Damian ducking, and Dick spinning 360 degrees before falling on his back. He misses Jason laughing his ass off. He misses Bruce challenging Jason in hand-to-hand. He misses Bruce regretting the challenge.

He misses Damian's sneak attack on Bruce from above and Dick's "Shakira! Shakira!" war cry. He misses Alfred telling them all off again. He misses Alfred watching a rerun of Wicked Tuna and trying to rub the Sharpie off his face. He misses Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin going out on patrol.

He misses the first few flurries of Gotham snow, of Robin complaining for two hours straight about hypothermia and Nightwing moaning in agreement before Batman asks Nightwing what happened to the Robin that flaunted around the scaly panties in any weather. He misses Red Hood telling Robin that he and Red Robin were spoiled by pants. He misses Batman regretting bringing up the scaly panties when Nightwing protests that he could still work the scaly panties if he really wanted to, and that he could prove it.

He misses them coming back to the cave, Alfred waiting for them. He misses Jason coming up to Bruce from behind and sticking his cold hands on the back of Bruce's neck. He misses Bruce nearly backhanding Jason in the jaw. He misses Alfred telling them all off (again, again). He misses Dick finishing off Damian's hot chocolate. He misses Jason daring Dick to take a sip of Bruce's black coffee. He misses Bruce's flat refusal to participate. He misses Dick taking it from him away. He misses Jason videoing Dick gagging and choking. He misses Damian stealing all the marshmallows. He misses Alfred bidding them goodnight because he does not want to be responsible for any riff-raff like the lot of them past midnight.

He misses Alfred replacing his warm Gatorade with a glass of water. He misses Dick kissing him on the temple as he makes his way up the stairs. He misses Jason drawing a heart with an arrow through it with JELLO in the middle. He misses Damian flicking him in the ear. He misses Bruce patting his shoulder and saying goodnight.

He wakes up to _Dr. Oakley: Yukon Vet -_ "Wily Coyote" completely disoriented as to what century he's in, ears aching. He takes a few sips of the ice water until his mouth doesn't feel like paste anymore, and then stumbles into the kitchen because he hopes that raspberry sorbet wasn't just a really good dream. He sees the artwork on his face in his reflection on the refrigerator.

He takes thoughtful bites of his sorbet while eyeing the abandoned Sharpie on the counter. He grabs the marker before trotting softly up the stairs.

* * *

Dick wakes up to no cereal. Jason wakes up to his helmet painted blue. Damian almost wakes up to a dick yelling 'I'm Nightwing!' drawn on his forehead, but Tim only manages a scribble before it's Mission Abort and Damian jumps awake and snarls loud enough to wake the entire Manor to Tim's night tyranny: " _Drake!"_

* * *

 **That's a wrap, y'all.**

 **I was a Dick in the whole tonsil department (four years old). All I remember is Barbie popsicles and getting a stuffed animal. And being mad when I was finally allowed (forced) to eat spaghetti again.**

 **Happy Halloween!**

 **Yours,**

 **HelloHai**

 **P.S. You guys don't understand how long National Geographic has been a tab on my computer for. It was forever. my computer didn't kknow what to do when I closed it. It was _that_ long. **

**Thanks to Jello for letting me hate.**

 **Thanks to protein shakes everywhere for letting me hate.**

 **Shout-out to dogs that sit on couches even when they're not supposed to. Let them be an example for us everywhere. Truly inspirational creatures.**

 **Finally: Huge thanks to Nat Geo. Love you lots. (Sponsor me?)**


End file.
